amencan ^tattmm 



EDITED BY 



JOmj T. MORSE, JR. 



American ^tatfgmen 



JOHN C. CALHOUN 



BY ->f^ 

DR. H. VON HOLST 

II 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

®be RitaerjsiDe prcjSjS Cambribge 






Copyright, 1882 and 1899, 
Bt HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

All rights reserved. 



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CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAaB 

I. Youth ,1 

II. House of Representatives. ... 12 

III. Secretary of War 38 

IV. Vice-President 61 

V. The Senate 103 

VI. Slavery 123 

VII. Under Van Buren 183 

VIII. Texas 221 

IX. Oregon and the Mexican War , , . 260 

Index 353 



JOHN C. CALHOUN 



CHAPTER I 
YOUTH 



Life is not only " stranger than fiction," but 
frequently also more tragical than any tragedy 
ever conceived by the most fervid imagination. 
Often in these tragedies of life there is not one 
drop of blood to make us shudder, nor a single 
event to compel the tears into the eye. A man 
endowed with an intellect far above the average, 
impelled by a high-soaring ambition, untainted 
by any petty or ignoble passion, and guided by 
a character of sterling firmness and more than 
common purity, yet, with fatal illusion, devoting 
all his mental powers, all his moral energy, and 
the whole force of his iron will to the service of 
a doomed and unholy cause, and at last sinking 
into the grave in the very moment when, under 
the weight of the top-stone, the towering pillars 
of the temple of his impure idol are rent to 
their very base, — can anything more tragical 
be conceived ? 



2 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

That is, in a few lines, the story of the life 
of John C. Calhoun. In spite of his grand ca- 
reer, South Carolina's greatest son has had a 
more hapless fate than any other of the illus- 
trious men in the history of the United States. 
With few exceptions it is probable that the read- 
ers of these pages will consider this a strange 
or even an absurd assertion, and thereby them- 
selves will furnish another proof of its truth. 
Alexander Hamilton, America's greatest polit- 
ical genius, has been obliged to wait three quar- 
ters of a century to have a statue erected to his 
memory, and then it had to be done by his own 
offspring. Calhoun has not had to complain of 
the same neglect, though nobody could have 
been justly accused of ingratitude if this honor 
had not been vouchsafed to him ; for he has no 
claims upon the gratitude of his country, al- 
though his name will forever remain one of the 
foremost in its records. But, in common with 
Alexander Hamilton, he is still waiting for the 
only monument worthy of his memory, a bio- 
graphy which does him full justice ; and he will 
probably have to wait much longer for such a 
memorial, — cere perennius, — which indeed, it 
is not unlikely, may never be erected. As yet 
it is hardly possible to pass an unbiased judg- 
ment upon him, because the wounds of the ter- 
rible conflict, in which he was during the life- 



YOUTH 3 

time of a whole generation the acknowledged 
leader, have not fully healed, and therefore those 
passions have not completely died away which 
were engendered by the catastrophe in which 
that conflict ended. Meanwhile, it becomes 
every day more difficult really to understand 
that struggle. Even the present generation, 
which has grown into manhood since the civil 
war, hardly realizes that it is not a soul-stirring 
romance, but sober history. The next genera- 
tion will find it easier to form an adequate con- 
ception of the life of the ancient Indians and 
Egyptians than of that of their own grandfa- 
thers ; for there is no other instance in all the 
history of the world where the civilizations of 
two different ages, with their antagonistic prin- 
ciples and modes of thinking and feeling, have 
been so intricately interwoven as in the United 
States during the times of the slavery conflict. 
It is only the part played by Calhoun in this 
conflict which puts him into the very first rank 
of the men who have acted on the political 
stage of the United States, though he has done 
enough else to secure for his name a permanent 
place in the annals of his country. 

As the years roll on, the fame of Daniel 
"Webster and Henry Clay is gradually growing 
dimmer, while the name of Calhoun has yet 
lost hardly anything of the lurid intensity with 



4 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

which it glowed on the political firmament of 
the United States towards the end of the first 
half of this century. Nor will it ever lose 
much of this. The fact is easily explained, 
though it may seem strange to the superficial 
student. The nvimber of Calhoun's admirers 
in his later years was insignificant in compari- 
son with the enthusiastic hosts who knew no 
more powerful charm than the captivating voice 
of the eloquent Kentuckian, and to-day it will 
not be seriously questioned that Webster was 
intellectually more than the peer of Calhoun. 
Neither of the three can lay claim to the name 
of a statesman in the highest acceptation of the 
term without more than one qualifying restric- 
tion, but Calhoun is certainly less entitled to it 
than either of his great rivals. Moreover, these 
had so many peculiar traits of character, habits, 
and fancies, that their lives are a rich source of 
pleasant anecdotes ; and from the background 
of the general historical development, their fig- 
ures spring forth in bold relief with a vividness 
equalling that of Washington, Jefferson, and 
John Adams. Of Calhoun the man, on the 
contrary, but very little is to be told. Even 
his contemporaries, with perhaps the exception 
of his nearest neighbors, did not know much of 
his doings as a private individual, or at least 
do not seem to have thought them of suffi- 



YOUTH 6 

cient interest to be handed down to posterity. 
AVhether his private correspondence, which is 
still withheld from the public, will throw much 
light on this side of his life cannot be told. 
I have to state with regret that, according to 
my information, not very much is to be ex- 
pected. I was assured in Charleston, by an 
intimate younger friend of Calhoun, that he 
had not been in the habit of carefully preserv- 
ing his private letters, and that many of his 
papers, which are at present intrusted to Mr. 
Hunter, of Virginia, were lost during the civil 
war. However that may be, the newspapers of 
the times and the published private correspond- 
ences of his co-actors tell hardly anything of 
the personal relations and the home-life of the 
man whose slightest public act was watched 
with interest by the whole nation. We hear 
that he was a just and kind master to his slaves, 
that he was possessed of an uncommon conver- 
sational talent, and that he exercised an especial 
fascination upon young men. This is about all. 
From the historical standpoint it is, of course, 
deeply to be regretted that we are so little in- 
formed about the every-day life of so remark- 
able a man ; and yet one cannot help feeling 
at the same time a certain satisfaction that we 
learn no more about it. There is no better 
proof of the personal purity of a public man 



6 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

than the complete stillness of all gossiping 
tongues, among friends as well as foes. The 
consequence of this silence is, however, that so 
soon as the grave closes over such a public per-, 
sonage, the figure begins to assume a shadowy 
appearance. A well-read student of the history 
of the United States may often easily imagine 
himself seated next to Webster and Clay at the 
social board, or walking with them in the lanes 
of their farms, though he may have been born 
after their eyes had been closed forever. But 
no one who has not actually grasped Calhoun's 
hand and looked into the depth of those steady 
and keen eyes will ever be tempted to indulge 
for a single moment in such an illusion with 
regard to him. Twenty or thirty years hence 
there will not be a single person left to whom 
he is or ever has been fully a man of flesh 
and bone. The Representative, the Secretary 
of War, the Vice-President, the " great Nulli- 
fier," the Senator, our posterity like ourselves 
may be perfectly acquainted with ; but the Cal- 
houn off the political stage, the Calhoun who 
ate and drank like other mortals, who laughed, 
chatted, and sorrowed, who enjoyed life and bat- 
tled with its small and great cares, is long ago 
dead, and no pen will ever be able to recall him 
to life in the same sense in which Webster and 
Clay still are and will remain alive so long as 



YOUTH 7 

the American people cherish the memory of 
their great men. 

Yet it is unquestionably true, as it was as- 
serted before, that the name of Calhoun already 
conveys a much more definite idea to the Amer- 
ican people than that of either AVebster or 
Clay, and that this difference will be steadily 
increased in his favor. The simple explana- 
tion of this remarkable fact is, that Calhoun 
is in an infinitely higher degree the represent- 
ative of an idea, and this idea is the pivotal 
point on which the history of the United States 
has turned from 1819 to nearly the end of the 
first century of their existence as an independ- 
ent republic. From about 1830 to the day of 
bis death, Calhoun may be called the very im- 
personation of the slavery question. From the 
moment when he assumes this character, his fig- 
ure towers far above all his contemporaries, even 
Jackson not excepted ; while up to that time he 
is, in spite of his uncommonly brilliant career, 
only an able politician of the higher and nobler 
order, having many peers and even a consider- 
able number of superiors among the statesmen 
of the United States. These introductory re- 
marks seem necessary in order to justify the 
brevity with which we are compelled to treat 
the youth of Calhoun and the first period of his 
public life. 



8 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

In 1733 James Calhoun is said to have emi- 
grated from Donegal in Ireland to the United 
States. He first went to Pennsylvania, then 
settled on the Kanawha, in Virginia, and at 
last, in 1756, removed to South Carolina. In 
1770 his son Patrick married Martha Caldwell, 
the daughter of a Presbyterian emigrant from 
Ireland. John Caldwell Calhoun, the third son 
of Patrick and Martha, was born March 18, 
1782, in the Abbeville District, South Carolina. 
Though his father died while he was still a boy, 
the ardent temper of the zealous revolutionary 
patriot seems to have exercised a marked influ- 
ence on the formation of the character of the 
son. John remained with his mother on the 
farm. There he led a quiet and simple life, for 
his father had left the family in very modest 
circumstances. No opportunity was offered him 
to attend regularly a good school, and his sol- 
itary rambles in the woods had to serve in 
lieu of systematic instruction. Being from his 
early childhood of a meditative turn of mind, 
the youth learned to think before his memory 
had become burdened with the thoughts of other 
people. This defective education in his boy- 
hood made itself felt through his whole life. 
In spite of the diligence with which he api^lied 
himself later, for some years, to his books, the 
stock of positive knowledge which he had to 



YOUTH 9 

fall back upon was never large, and the peculiar 
kind of narrowness which is inseparable from 
one-sidedness was among the most prominent 
traits in his mental and moral structure. But 
what he lacked in breadth of view he fully 
made up by penetrating intensity, bold inde- 
pendence of thinking, and a keen instinct for 
the true nature of the things which fell within 
the limited circle in which his mind moved. 

Calhoun had completed his eighteenth year, 
when he began an uninterrupted course of sys- 
tematic study in order to fit himself for the 
higher walks of life. Under the direction of 
his brother-in-law, Dr. AVaddel, a Presbyterian 
clergyman, he prepared himself for college, and 
after two short years he was able to enter the 
junior class at Yale. In 1804 he was graduated 
with high honors, and then devoted himself for 
three years to the study of law, spending eigh- 
teen months of the time at the law school at 
Litchfield, Connecticut. Of much more im- 
portance than the often-repeated story, that 
while at Yale he had been declared fit and 
likely to become some day President of the 
United States, is the unmistakable fact that 
his prolonged sojourn in New England exer- 
cised a marked influence upon the formation of 
the political opinions which he held in the be- 
ginning of bis political career. 



10 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Having returned to Abbeville, he began to 
practise law ; but it does not appear that the 
public were especiall}'^ eager to avail themselves 
of his services as an attorney and counsellor, 
nor that he distinguished himself in any case 
of importance. A man of his general ability 
and uncommon logical acuteness could not have 
failed to acquire a prominent standing in this 
calling if he had devoted himself to it with 
his whole energy. Yet he woidd undoubtedly 
never have become a great lawyer, because he 
was not objective enough to examine his pre- 
mises with sufficient care, while he built his 
argument upon them with undeviating and most 
incisive logic, thereby frequently arriving at 
most shocking conclusions with nothing to stand 
upon except a basis of false postulates. More- 
over, such natures never attain greatness, unless 
they pursue an aim which fills the whole head 
and heart with the force of a burning passion, 
a frame of mind into which but few men caa 
be put by the common law ; and of these few 
Calh.oun certainly was not one. He was a born 
leader of men, and nature had destined him 
for a political career. While at college the 
exciting questions of the day had engrossed his 
whole attention, and the intelligence and ear- 
nestness with which he discussed them proved 
that he would try to have a hand in shaping 



YOUTH 11 

the events of the future. Sooner and in a 
higher degree than he himself had probably 
dared to anticipate, this wish was to be ful- 
filled. 

He had barely had time to get again familiar 
with the surroundings of his youth, when he 
was sent by his district to the state Legislature. 
The stage was too small to draw the eyes of 
the nation upon the young man, but it was the 
right place to prove his fitness for a larger one. 
In 1811 he was elected a member of Congress, 
and in the same year he, married his cousin, 
rioride Calhoun. She was possessed of a mod- 
est fortune, which enabled him to steer with all 
sails set into the open sea of politics. On 
November 4 he took his seat in the House of 
Representatives, having previously removed to 
Bath on the Savannah. 



CHAPTER II 

HOUSE OF EEPEESENTATIVES 

The times were most favorable for a clever 
and ambitious young statesman to make a bril- 
liant debut. The policy of commercial restric- 
tions, with which Jefferson and Madison had 
tried to force England and France to respect 
the rights of neutrals, had signally failed. The 
party in power had not the candor and moral 
courage to acknowledge that it had stumbled 
into grave mistakes, but it was apparent tliat 
it could no more, for any length of time, pur- 
sue its old course. If the great European war 
should last much longer — and there was no 
prospect of its speedy termination — the United 
States would evidently be forced to abandon 
all half-hearted and two-edged measures, and to 
adopt a clear and decisive policy. It was per- 
haps impossible to satisfy the commercial States ; 
but thus much was certain, that their dissatis- 
faction was too great and too well-founded to 
permit an expectation that they would jog on 
with impunity in the old ruts. Nor would either 
the honor or the vital interests of the Union 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 13 

allow that it should bow its head in meekness, 
and receive with folded arms the stripes which 
the belligerent powers were pleased to lay on 
its back. Whatever might be resolved upon 
and done, it was sure to raise a great clamor 
among a considerable portion of the people ; yet 
something must be done, and in such circum- 
stances the race generally is to the swift and 
the battle to the strong. 

It was a coincidence of the utmost impor- 
tance that the ranks of the revolutionary pa- 
triots had, by this time, become so thinned 
that the representatives of a new generation 
coidd grasp the helm without having to en- 
counter the opposition of long acknowledged 
authority. It so happened, also, that among 
these newcomers on the political stage there 
were some exceptionally young men, possessed 
of a much higher order of talent than most of 
their seniors. So the leadership of the nation 
in this great crisis fell into the hands of untried 
and inexperienced men, who had hardly reached 
maturity, yet were fully conscious of their own 
power and worth, and who were impelled by 
a high-toned pride and ardent patriotism, and 
urged on by the glowing visions of an un- 
bounded ambition. It was therefore to be ex- 
pected that, true to the nature of hot-blooded, 
daring, and self-relying youth, they would ad- 



14 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

vise the cutting of the Gordian knot which the 
silver-haired sages of the Revolution had vainly 
tried to disentangle. At which side of it, in 
their opinion, the stroke of the sword should 
be dealt, could not be doubtful from the first. 
In spite of Napoleon, the majority of the peo- 
ple had not yet entirely lost the enthusiastic 
sympathy awakened by the French Kevolution, 
and the services rendered by France to the 
United States in the war of independence were 
still unforgotten. On the other hand, the old 
wounds which had been inflicted by the blows 
exchanged with England had not quite ceased 
to rankle ; the emancipated daughter smarted 
under the overbearing haughtiness of the mo- 
ther, whom she had once forced to submit to 
her just claims. Then, too, above all else. Na- 
poleon's violent decrees against the rights of 
neutrals were to a considerable extent mere 
stage lightnings, while the English Orders in 
Council told with terrible effect upon the com- 
merce and the general prosperity of the United 
States, and the pretended right of visitation, 
which was frequently exercised with studied 
insolence, cut the American pride to the quick. 
Prudential reasons of great weight might be 
urged against resenting all these injuries at this 
time with powder and lead, and personal inter- 
est as well as party spirit would surely put these 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 15 

reasons into the strongest light. But it was no 
less certain that the passionate and indignant 
appeals to the counter-reasons would awaken a 
loud echo in numberless bosoms, since every 
patriot had to confess to himself that they too 
had great weight. 

The general elections for the Twelfth Con- 
gress had resulted in favor of the war party. It 
was principally due to his position towards this 
overshadowing question that Henry Clay owed 
his election to the speakership ; and for the same 
reason the Speaker awarded the second place on 
the Committee on Foreign Relations to the new 
member from South Carolina. Mr. Cralle, the 
editor of Calhoun's works, assures us that at 
the first meeting of the members Calhoun was 
— on motion of Mr. Porter, of Pennsylvania, to 
whom the Speaker had assigned the chairman- 
ship — mianimously chosen to preside over their 
deliberations. So he held from the first the 
place which, next to the speakership, was the 
most important in the House of Representatives. 

On November 29, 1811, the committee, to 
wliifh that part of the President's message re- 
latins' to foreign affairs had been referred, sub- 
mitted its report. Although the report was 
presented by Mr. Porter, it seems likely that 
it was mainly written by Calhoun. The essence 
of it was contained in the following sentences : -^ 



16 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

"To wronos so daring in tlieir character, and so 
disgraceful in tlieir execution, it is impossible that the 
people of the United States should remain indiffer- 
ent. We must now tamely and quietly submit, or 
we must resist by those means which God has placed 
within our reach. 

" Your committee will not cast a shade on the 
American name by the expression of a doubt which 
branch of this alternative will be embraced ; . . • the 
period has arrived when, in the opinion of your com- 
mittee, it is the sacred duty of Congress to call forth 
the patriotism and the resources of the country." 

The report concluded with six resolutions, 
which were designed to give effect to this o^jin- 
ion. 

So the first act of Calhoun on the national 
stage was to sound the war-trumpet. Hence- 
forth incessant war, war to the bitter end, was 
to be his destiny to the last day of his life ; 
though it was in later years to be waged not 
against a foreign aggressor, but against internal 
adversaries, against the peace of the Union, 
against the true welfare of his own section of 
the country. 

On December 12 Calhoun delivered his first 
set speech in Congress, defending the resolu- 
tions and refuting the arguments of John Ran- 
dolph, who was himself a member of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations. On a former 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 17 

occasion Calhoun had addressed to the House 
a few remarks on a question of little impor- 
tance, which he had concluded with an allusion 
to the diffidence and embarrassment which a 
young man necessarily felt in speaking to the 
assembled representatives of the nation. Now, 
however, there was in his whole tone and man- 
ner no more the slightest trace of such a feel- 
ing. He did not speak with arrogance, and 
still less was there anything personally offen- 
sive in what he said, or in the manner with 
which he said it. From the beginning of his 
public career he observed the parliamentary 
proprieties with the rigor and naturalness of 
the born gentleman. Often did he prove that 
he could wield with equal force and dexterity 
the trenchant sword and the massive club, but 
he always attacked the argument of his adver- 
sary and not his person, and he was never 
guilty of the hectoring and bullying tone in 
which so many of the Southern politicians in- 
dulged with keen relish. From the first he 
entered the lists with the proud conviction of 
being fully the equal of any man, und he al- 
ways spoke in the weighty tone of authority. 
Upon him the shaking of Randolph's long fin- 
ger made no impression. With open visor he 
met the 'much-dreaded antagonist, and though 
he did not throw him to the ground, yet the 



18 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Virginian came out of the figlit only second 
best. They exchanged many a tilt, and the 
ill-humor with which Randolph spoke of Cal- 
houn, in his private correspondence, shows how 
much he felt the wounds received from the 
lance of that adversary. 

Calhoun began his speech with the open 
avowal " that the committee recommended the 
measures now before the House, as a prepara- 
tion for war ; " and he added, "■ such, in fact, was 
its express resolve, agreed to, I believe by every 
member, except that gentleman [Randolph]. 
. . . Indeed, the report could mean nothing but 
war or empty menace." With lofty indigna- 
tion he repelled the insinuation that, though 
there was adequate cause for war, the people 
would not deem their violated interests and 
outraged rights of sufficient moment willingly 
to defray the costs of fighting for their vindica- 
tion. 

" But it may be, and I believe it was said, that the 
people will not pay taxes, because the rights violated 
are not worth defending ; or that the defence will 
cost more than the gain. Sir, I here enter my sol- 
emn protest against this low and ' calculating ava- 
rice ' entering this hall of legislation. It is only 
fit for shops and counting-houses ; and ought not to 
disgrace the seat of power by its squalid aspect. 
Whenever it touches sovereign power, the nation is 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 19 

ruined. It is too short-sighted to defend itself. It 
is a compromising spirit, always ready to yield a part 
to save the residue. It is too timid to have in itself 
the laws of self-preservation. It is never safe but 
under the shield of honor. . . . Sir, I am not versed 
in this calculating policy ; and will not, therefore, 
pretend to estimate in dollars and cents the value of 
national independence. I cannot measure in shillings 
and pence the misery, the stripes, and the slavery of 
our impressed seamen ; nor even the value of our 
shipping, commercial, and agricultural losses under 
the Orders in Council and the British system of 
blockade." 

With equal candor he answered Randolph's 
question, why then, if all this was so, war was 
not declared immediately : '' Because," he said, 
"we are not yet prepared." That there was 
any danger in avowing this and, at the same 
time, using the threatening language employed 
by himself and those who shared his views, he 
denied ; because, he said, England would never 
be provoked into beginning hostilities from a 
fear of uniting " all parties here." 

After this speech the passing of the resolu- 
tions by the House coidd not be understood 
otherwise than as a formal announcement that 
war would be declared so soon as, in the ojiin- 
ion of the war party, the country should be 
sufficiently prepared. So far as it depended 



20 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

upon the House, the great question was virtu- 
ally decided, and the war party pushed vigor- 
ously on towards the bloody goal. They needed 
half a year more to reach it. President Mad- 
ison was about the last man to long for the 
laurels of "the conquering hero." His whole 
character as well as his political convictions 
made him exceedingly loath to gratify the 
wishes of the young Hotspurs, who neverthe- 
less dragged him along by a strong rope. As 
Jefferson's Secretary of State and as President 
he had advocated and pursued a policy, the 
legitimate consequence of which was war. He 
could not now take a decided stand against the 
war party without acknowledging that this policy 
had been, from beginning to end, a mistaken 
one, — an avowal which no statesman will easily 
make, and which, on the part of Madison, woidd 
have been a formal renunciation of his aspirations 
for a second term. That was the vise in which 
he was held by the war party, and mercilessly 
they screwed it tighter and tighter. In vain he 
tried to conciliate them by consenting to follow 
their lead ; they insisted that he should assume 
the full responsibility, and they would be satisfied 
with nothing less. 

On April 1 the President sent a message to 
Congress, recommending an embargo. Mr. 
Grundy said that he understood it "as a war 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 21 

measure, and it was meant that it should directly 
lead to war," and Calhoun afterwards declared 
"its manifest propriety as a prelude to war." 
Without grantinj,^ to the opposition the necessary 
time to develop their views. Congress, on April 4, 
passed the hill laying an embargo on all vessels. 
It was limited to sixty days solely because those 
who liehl the destiny of the country in their 
hands were fidly resolved that it should not "be 
permitted to expire without any hostile measure 
being taken against Great Britain." 

It was not due to the President that this an- 
nouncement, indirectly made by Calhoun on 
May 6, was not fulfilled to the letter. Another 
message laid before Congress at length all the 
wroncs which the United States liad suffered 
for so many years. " We behold," it said, " in 
fine, on the side of Great Britain a state of war 
a<'ainst the United States, and on the side of the 
United States a state of peace towards Great 
Britain." Therefore it was now incumbent on 
Congress to decide whether force should be op- 
posed to force. This was virtually a recommen- 
dation of war. In the name of the Committee on 
Foreign Relations, Calhoun presented a report 
to the House, advising "an iuimediate appeal 
to arms," and, at the same time, he moved that 
a formal declaration of war should be issued 
against Great Britain. On the following day 



22 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the House passed this to the third reading, after 
Randolph's motion, renewed by Milnor, to open 
the doors, and Stow's request to postpone the 
final action to the next day, had both been re- 
jected. Thus the majority crowned the high- 
handed recklessness with which, ever since the 
beginning of the session, they had bent the just 
claims of the minority under their imperious 
will. In later years Calhoun learned well 
enough to clamor for the rights of the minority, 
while he was but too apt to forget that the ma- 
jority also had rights, and, above all others, the 
right to rule. Perhaps the time was not far 
distant when he and his associates would have 
reason to rue their present abuse of power, for 
the declaration of war received a majority of 
only thirty votes, although the Democratic ma- 
jority in the full House was seventy. 

In the Senate, the defection from the party 
even threatened to become fatal to the wishes 
of the war party. On motion of Mr. Gregg, of 
Pennsylvania, the bill providing for the decla- 
ration of v/ar was recommitted by a majority 
of four- Not vmtil June 17 did a sufficient 
number of reluctant Democrats yield to allow 
the amended bill to be passed to a third reading. 
The House agreed to the amendments on the 
following day. 

A few days after the declaration of war, the 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 23 

House took up the question whether and how 
far the restrictive policy concerning commerce 
should be abandoned. The Committee on Ways 
and Means reported a bill for the partial sus- 
pension of the Non-Importation Act. This was 
not deemed sufficient relief in the States on 
which the mistaken policy hitherto pursued had 
weighed most heavily. Mr. Richardson, of 
Massachusetts, moved the total repeal of the 
whole restrictive system. The motion was not 
as'reed to : but when it was renewed the fol- 
lowing day in a modified form, rendering the 
proposition somewhat less sweeping, the casting 
vote of the Speaker was required to carry the 
day against the opposition. For two years more 
the pernicious policy was persisted in. 

Calhoun had separated himself on this im- 
portant question from the majority. He ear- 
nestly advocated the repeal of the Non-Im- 
portation Act. His obligations as a party man 
he satisfied by denying that Jefferson's and 
Madison's policy could be justly charged with 
pusillanimity, — a compliment the more empty, 
because the closing remarks of his speech proved 
that he himself was not convinced of the truth 
of the assertion. It was a question not of mo- 
tives, but of policy, and as to that he said : " The 
restrictive system, as a mode of resistance, and 
a means of obtaining redress of our wrongs, has 



24 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

never been a favorite one with nie." The rea- 
sons on which he supported his opinion were 
sound, and the whole manner in which he treated 
the subject was that of a statesman standing 
on sufficiently elevated ground to take in the 
whole view, and not to be misled by petty 
details. On the past he bestowed but a slight 
glance, very properly confining himself to the 
effect which the maintenance of the old policy 
would have under the altered circumstances. 
From this point of view, he condemned it with- 
out qualification in measured but severe terms. 
" With no small mortification," he asked those 
who had supported the war, and now thought its 
success depejident upon the continuation of the 
Non-Imj^ortation Act, whether the war was to 
be " an appendage only " of this act. " If so, 
I disclaim it. It is an alarming idea to be in a 
state of war, and not to rely on our courage or 
energy, but on a measure of peace." The as- 
sertion that, if the Non-Importation Act should 
be continued, a speedy restoration of peace 
might be relied upon, he declared to be delusive 
and a cause of alarm, for " it will debilitate the 
springs of war. . . . We have had a peace like 
a war. In the name of Heaven, let us not have 
the only thing that is worse, a war like a peace." 
This solemn warning was certainly not out of 
place ; but if it was necessary to utter it within 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 25 

a week after tlie declaration of war, he ought to 
have pondered well ere he did his best to push 
the country into a conflict which, whatever it 
might become in the course of time, was origi- 
nally not a national but a party war, or rather 
a war of the party leaders. 

This all-important point had not been soon 
enou2:h taken into due consideration, either by 
him or his associates. Tliis is the one great 
blame resting upon the war party, which even 
those cannot gainsay who otherwise fully ap- 
prove of their course. The whole war was one 
uninterrupted struggle against the evil conse- 
quences of this fact. There was much truth in 
what Calhoun had asserted in his speech on 
May 6. It was, indeed, to a great extent, the 
second war for the liberty and independence of 
the United States, but it was irretrievably viti- 
ated by its party origin. How the ambitious 
plans of the young leaders were dashed to pieces ! 
Instead of Canada being conquered, the time 
came when Calhoun, with tears in his eyes, had 
to ask the assistance of Webster to pull the 
government out of its financial difficulties, which 
had come to such a climax that the worst might 
be apprehended. It was a deep humiliation. 
Yet where is the American patriot who would 
wish to erase these pages from the tablets of the 
history of the Union ? Much less could any one 



26 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

wish to miss them in the career of Calhoun, for 
in one respect, and that the most important one, 
they are the most attractive and satisfactory in 
the record of his life. There is at this time 
nothing of sectional prejudice and narrowness 
in him. He stands on the broadest national 
ground, and his political sins are mainly due to 
the impatient ardor and buoyancy of his patriot- 
ism. Undoubtedly he pursues the aims of his 
personal ambition with full consciousness ; he 
does not, however, seek its satisfaction at the 
expense of the Union, but by promoting what 
he is fully convinced that the interests and the 
honor of his country demand. The word " na- 
tion," which Calhoun in later years struck from 
the jjolitical and constitutional dictionary of the 
United States as having no basis whatever to 
rest upon, either in fact or in law, is at this 
time frequently in his mouth. How could it be 
otherwise, as the idea of it was deeply imbedded 
in his heart and constantly occupying his mind ? 
His solicitude for the national interests did not 
cease with the war, nor was it confined to objects 
immediately connected with the war or referring 
exclusively to the relations of the Union to for- 
eign powers. 

In a speech delivered January 81, 1816, on 
a motion to repeal the direct tax, he drew a 
sketch of his views concerning the lessons to be 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 27 

derived from the experiences of the war as to 
the policy which the United States ought to 
pursue in future. The starting-point of his 
argument was the assertion that " future wars 
with England are not only possible, but . . . 
highly probable, — nay, that they will certainly 
take place," because the United States would 
" have to encounter British jealousy and hos- 
tility in every shape ; not immediately mani- 
fested by open force or violence, perhaps, but 
by indirect attemj^ts to check your growth and 
prosperity." He therefore deemed it necessary 
gradually to prepare for this emergency, not 
only by increasing the military forces of the 
Union, but also by systematically developing 
those germs of giant strength which Providence 
had bestowed upon and intrusted to the Amer- 
ican people. " As to the species of prepara- 
tion, . . . the navy most certainly, in any point 
of view, occupies the first place. It is the most 
safe, most effectual, and cheapest mode of de- 
fence." The internal strife during the war 
would have lost much of its bitterness, if the 
majority had from the first understood this ob- 
vious truth, and acted accordingly. The viola- 
tion of the rights and interests of the citizens 
of the States, as a seafaring people, had given 
rise to the war, and yet the demand of the New 
England States to wage it principally by sea 



28 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

had remained unheeded, until experience forced 
the majority to acknowledge, if not in woi'ds, at 
least by deeds, that for once the opposition was 
not prompted exclusively by local interests and 
a factional spirit. If the party had listened to 
the advice of Calhoun with regard to the wishes 
and complaints of the oj)position, the animosity 
of the Northeastern Federalists would never 
have reached the pitch to which it finally came. 
In the light of later events, it is one of the most 
interesting facts in the life of Calhoun that, in 
the course of the war, the question was for a 
while seriously discussed in New England whe- 
ther the people of that section should not try to 
form an alliance with South Carolina against 
the narrow anti-commercial policy of Virginia 
and her followers. 

The above-mentioned speech also contains the 
first declaration in favor of internal improve- 
ments. " Let us make great permanent roads ; 
not, like the Romans, with views of subjecting 
and ruling provinces, but for the more honor- 
able purjDoses of defence, and of connecting 
more closely the interests of various sections of 
this great country." It is true that Calhoun's 
immediate object in this is also the safety of the 
country in future wars ; but he is not only grat- 
ified that the building of roads will incidentally 
tend towards nationalizing the Union : he ursres 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 29 

upon Congress the measure because it will have 
this effect. Always starting from the same 
point, he furthermore comes to the conclusion 
that the national government should bestow its 
protecting care upon the industrial interests of 
the country ; and here, too, he expressly states 
that other reasons also should induce Congress 
to adopt this policy. 

" In regard to tlie question how far manufactures 
ought to be fostered, it is the duty of this country, 
as a means of defence, to encourage its domestic in- 
dustry, more esjiecially that part of it which provides 
the necessary materials for clothing and defence. . . . 
The question relating to manufactures must not de- 
pend on the abstract principle that industry, left to 
pursue its own course, will find in its own interests 
all the encouragement that is necessary. Laying the 
claims of manufacturers entirely out of view, on 
general principles, without regard to their interests, 
a, certain encouragement should be extended at least 
to our woollen and cotton manufactures." 

It is remarkable that in the whole speech 
there is no mention whatever made of the Con- 
stitution. The thought does not enter his head 
that constitutional objections could possibly be 
raised. The reason of this is simply that the 
statesman has not yet been transformed into the 
attorney of a special cause. He proceeds, as a 
matter of course, from the assumption that the 



30 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

first question a statesman has to ask himself is 
not what is constitutional, but what is wise and 
politic, unless it manifestly contravenes a pro- 
vision of the Constitution, and to take it for 
granted that the constitutional power exists, 
until the contrary is proved. As the people 
have not been created for the sake of the Con- 
stitution, but the Constitution has been estab- 
lished by the people to secure and further the 
welfare of the people, this is the only rational 
course ; and it is perfectly safe, since, as every 
measure is sure to meet with some opposition, 
any constitutional flaw with regard to the pro- 
position will certainly be pointed out, if it can 
be discovered without the aid of a microscope 
and hair-splitting sophistries of pettifogging law- 
yers. Only when, instead of the national inter- 
ests, the interests of the slave-holders had become 
the glasses through which Calhoun viewed every- 
thing, he began to search the Constitution for 
the power to do what he had once recommended 
as prudent and even necessary, and then he dis- 
covered things in it which he had never dreamed 
of before ; nay, its general spirit underwent a 
radical change in his eyes. 

On January 8, 1816, Calhoun, as chairman 
of the Committee on National Currency, re- 
ported a bill " to incorporate the subscribers to 
the Bank of the United States." In a speech 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 31 

which he delivered on February 26, in support 
of the bill, he referred to the constitutional 
question, but merely in order to state that it 
" had been already so freely and frequently 
discussed, that all had made up their minds on 
it." So, according to his own statement, he had 
most deliberately come to the conclusion that 
Congress had the constitutional power to estab- 
lish a national bank. Though this has neces- 
sarily to be inferred from the fact of his report- 
ing the bill, it had to be expressly stated on 
account of his subsequent attempts to make 
himself and others believe that he had been com- 
pelled by the financial embarrassments of the 
government to waive the constitutional question. 
That these embarrassments exercised a power- 
ful influence upon the formation of his opinions 
cannot be doubted, but even in regard to the 
expediency of the measure he was not solely con- 
trolled by them. " As to the question whether 
a national bank would be favorable to the ad- 
ministration or the finances of the government, 
it was one on which there was so little doubt, 
that gentlemen would excuse him if he did not 
enter into it." He does not say "now," or, 
" under the present circumstances," but makes 
a general statement without any restriction 
whatever. There is nothing astonishing in this, 
for the additional strength which it was sup- 



32 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

posed that the national government would de- 
rive from the bank was at this time no cause of 
alarm to him ; and as to the other political and 
economical considerations involved in the jjro- 
blem, he moved as yet in as thick a fog as the 
whole people. The fact is, that with regard to 
all the great economical problems, which were 
soon to agitate the country so deeply, Calhoun 
held exactly the opposite ground to that which 
he afterwards occupied, on the constitutional 
question as well as on that of expediency. He 
and his partisans have done their very best to 
invalidate the charge of inconsistency, but they 
have not been able to succeed ; for although an 
edition of his speeches was published in which 
those earlier efforts were omitted, the speeches 
themselves could not be wiped from the records 
of Congress, and, as was his wont, he had ex- 
pressed himself too plainly and explicitly to 
render the art of subsequent interpretation of 
any avail. One would greatly wrong him by 
doubting whetlier he was afterwards as sincere 
as now, but his sincerity does not alter the fact 
that he completely reversed his position. His 
partisans have paid him a bad compliment by 
asserting that his earlier utterances cannot with 
fairness be called upon to bear witness against 
his later doctrines, because they were but his 
first impressions, put before the public without 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 33 

due deliberation, in an unguarded manner, on 
the spur of some particular occasion. Had the 
House of Representatives sunk to such a bot- 
tomless depth that it followed the leadership of 
a young zealot who did not know how to bridle 
his tongue, but on the gravest questions of the 
day babbled out the first thoughts that happened 
to flit through his giddy brain? What, then, 
were the subjects which this chairman of most 
important committees seriously reflected upon, 
if not these, almost the only ones on which 
he deemed it worth his while to make long 
speeches ? Moreover, this unpardonable levity 
and thoughtlessness must have lasted a long 
while, for he clung to these opinions for years, 
frequently repeating them and urging them 
upon Congress with increased energy. 

His speech on the New Tariff Bill (April 6, 
1816) was a long and carefully prepared argu- 
ment in favor of the whole economical platform 
on which the Whig party stood to the last day 
of its existence. He started with the bold pro- 
position that it was a matter of " vital impor- 
tance, touching . . . the security and permanent 
prosperity of our country," to afford adequate 
protection to the cotton and woollen manufac- 
tures. Even Henry Clay and Horace Greeley 
have not been able to put their favorite doctrine 
into stronger language. Nor was he satisfied 



34 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

to have tlie fostering care of the government 
confined to these goods. His final aim was the 
industrial independence of the United States 
from Europe, and this, he thought, could be 
attained by protective duties. He bitterly com- 
plained of the unexpected "apathy and aver- 
sion " which manifested themselves on this sub- 
ject. In his opinion the country was " prepared, 
even to maturity, for the introduction of manu- 
factures." If he deemed it nevertheless neces- 
sary to assist them with protective duties, it was 
in order " to put them beyond the reach of con- 
tingency." There is not one word in the whole 
speech warranting the interpretation that he 
demands only momentary aid for the manufac- 
tures, which had been stimulated into existence 
by the war, and would now inevitably have to 
succumb to English competition, if they should 
not be propped up by artificial means. He 
advocated a " system," to which the only well- 
founded but not " decisive objection " was " that 
capital employed in manufacturing produced a 
greater dependence on the part of the employed 
than in commerce, navigation, or agriculture." 
Though this was to be regretted, it was " more 
than counterpoised " by other " incidental po- 
litical advantages." 

" It produced an interest strictly American, — as 
much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 35 

advantage of commerce or navigation. . . . Again, it 
is calculated to bind together more closely our widely 
spread republic. It will greatly increase our mutual 
dependence and intercourse ; and will, as a necessary 
consequence, excite an increased attention to in- 
ternal improvements, a subject every way so inti- 
matelj' connected with the ultimate attainment of 
national strength and the perfection of our political 
institutions. 






He regarded the fact that it woukl " make 
the parts adhere more closely ; that it would 
form a new and most powerful cement, and out- 
weigh any political objections that might be 
urged against the system." 

In a speech on February 4, 1817, on a bill to 
set aside the bank dividends and bonus as a 
permanent fund for the construction of roads 
and canals, Calhoun, for the first time, entered 
upon an extended argument on the constitu- 
tional question with regard to internal improve- 
ments. The objection that it is necessary to 
secure the previous assent of the States, within 
the limits of which the internal improvements 
are to be made, he declared to be not " worth 
the discussion, because the good sense of the 
States may be relied on. They will, in all 
cases, readily yield their assent." Also as to 
the power of Congress he is so explicit that, 
when he afterwards positively denied it, his 



36 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

opponents need not have troubled themselves 
about an argument of their own ; so far as he 
was concerned it would have sufficed to read 
some extracts from this speech : — 

" It is mainly urged that the Congress can only ap- 
ply the public money in execution of the enumerated 
powers. I am no advocate for refined arguments on 
the Constitution. The instrument was not intended 
as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on. 
[If he had but followed the example of the Persian 
king, and charged his body servant to repeat to him 
these two sentences every morning!] It ought to 
be construed with plain good sense ; and what can 
be more express than the Constitution on this point? 
... If the framers had intended to limit the use of 
the money to the powers afterwards enumerated and 
defined, nothing could have been more easy than to 
have expressed it plainly. . . . But suppose the Con- 
stitution to be silent, why should we be confined in 
the application of moneys to the enumerated powers ? 
There is nothing in the reason of the thing, that I 
can perceive, why it should be so restricted ; and the 
habitual and uniform practice of the government 
coincides with my opinion. ... In reply to this uni- 
form course of legislation, I expect it will be said 
that our Constitution is founded on positive and writ- 
ten principles, and not on precedents. I do not deny 
the position ; but I have introduced these instances 
to prove the uniform sense of Congress and the coun- 
try (for they have not been objected to) as to our 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 37 

powers ; and surely they furnish better evidence of 
the true interpretation of the Constitution than the 
most refined and subtle arguments. Let it not be 
argued that the construction for which I contend 
gives a dangerous extent to the powers of Congress. 
In this point of view I conceive it to be more safe 
than the opposite. By giving a reasonable extent to 
the money power, it exemjits us from the necessity 
of giving a strained and forced construction to the 
other enumerated powers." 

Thus he was not only the champion of the 
constitutionality of internal improvements, but 
he boldly avowed latitudinarian principles with 
regard to the general construction of the Con- 
stitution. It was a rather remarkable coinci- 
dence that this was the last great speech which 
he delivered as a member of the House of Re- 
presentatives. He was called to act on another 
stage, where less, or no, opportunity was offered 
to develop his views on these subjects before 
the whole people, but there is no proof lacking 
that he adhered to them for some time longer. 



CHAPTER III 

SECRETARY OF WAR 

Although Calhoun, in a speech delivered 
on January 17, 1817, had deprecated the feel- 
ing which made "the very best talents of the 
. House, men of the most aspiring character, 
anxious to fill the departments or foreign mis- 
sions," he himself, less than two months after- 
wards, readily accepted a place in Mr. Monroe's 
Cabinet as Secretary of War. The duties of 
his office stood in no direct relation to the eco- 
nomical policy of the Federal government, but, 
as he was anxious to see his views adopted, he 
had no difficulty in laying them again before 
Congress. A resolution of the House of Re- 
presentatives, of April 4, 1818, had called on 
him for "a plan for the application of such 
means as are within the power of Congress, for 
the purpose of opening and constructing such 
roads and canals as may deserve and require 
the aid of government, with a view to military 
operations in time of war." His report of 
January 14, 1819, began by laying down the 
sound and broad principle that, 



SECRETARY OF WAR 39 

*' a judicious system of roads and canals, con- 
structed for the convenience of commei^ce and the 
transportation of the mail only, without any refei-- 
ence to military operations, is itself among the most 
efficient means for ' the more complete defence of the 
United States.' Without adverting to the fact that 
the roads and canals which such a system would re- 
quire are, with few exceptions, precisely those which 
would be required for the operation of war, such a 
system, by consolidating our Union [!], and increas- 
ing our wealth and fiscal capacity, would add greatly 
to our resources in war." 

He then traced in general outlines a vast plan 
of roads and canals, concluding his argument 
with the following significant remarks : — 

" Many of the roads and canals which have been 
suggested are no doubt of the first importance to the 
commerce, the manufactures, the agriculture, and po- 
litical prosperity of the country, but are not, for that 
reason, less useful or necessary for military purposes. 
It is, in fact, one of the great advantages of our 
country, enjoying so many others, that whether we 
regard its internal improvements in relation to mili- 
tary, civil, or political purposes, very nearly the same 
system, in all its parts, is required. ... If those 
roads or canals had been pointed out which are neces- 
sary for military purposes, the list would have been 
small indeed." 

In a report of December 3, 1824, "on the 
tondition of the military establishment," etc., 



40 JOHN C. CAI.HOUN 

he recurred once more to the subject with 
the same explicitiiess and emphasis. There is 
therefore no reason to suppose Mr. Nathan 
Sargent guilty of exaggeration, when he writes 
that in June, 1824, " Mr. Calhoun spoke of his 
projected improvements and the great benefits 
that the country would derive from them with 
a warmth, earnestness, and enthusiasm which 
indicated that his whole soul was in ' the sys- 
tem ' he had projected." After he had ex- 
changed the Secretaryship of War for the Vice- 
Presidency, at a public dinner given in his 
honor in the Pendleton District on April 26, 
1825, the following toast was received with 
great enthusiasm : " Internal improvement : 
guided by the wisdom and energy of its able 
advocates, it cannot fail to strengthen and per- 
petuate our bond of union." Again, on May 
27, 1825, at Abbeville, on a similar occasion, he 
himself said, " I gave my zealous efforts to all 
such measures : . . . a due protection of those 
manufactures of the country which had taken 
root during the period of war and restrictions : 
and finally, a system of connecting the various 
portions of the country by a judicious system 
of internal improvement." With the approval 
of South Carolina, he still pointed with satis- 
faction and pride to his agency in promoting 
what she and he were soon so decisively to con' 



SECRETARY OF WAR 41 

demn as impolitic, unjust, dangerous to the in- 
dependence of the States, and unconstitutional. 
In later years, Calhoun would have given 
much if he could have torn these leaves from 
his book of record as a Representative and as 
Secretary of War. Else these were the bright- 
est and happiest years of his public life, though 
the first premonitory gusts of the storms which 
were to rage through all the rest of it began 
while he held the latter office. Many of his 
friends and admirers had with regret seen him 
abandon his seat in the legislative hall for a 
place in the President's council. They appre- 
hended that he would, to a great extent, lose 
the renown which he had gained as a member 
of Congress, for they thought that the dialectic 
turn of his mind rendered him unfit to become a 
successful administrator. He undeceived them 
in a manner which astonished even those who 
had not shared these apprehensions. The De- 
partment of War was in a state of really as- 
tounding confusion when he assumed the charge 
of it. Into this chaos he soon brought order, and 
the whole service of the department received an 
organization so simple and at the same time so 
efficient that it has, in the main, been adhered to 
by all his successors, and proved itself capable of 
standing even the test of the civil war. Niles's 
" Register " said on March 27, 1824 : — 



42 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

"Judging from the various reports that all of us 
have seen from the War Department, the order and 
harmony, regularity and promptitude, punctuality and 
responsibility, introduced by Mr. Calhoun in every 
branch of the service, have never been rivalled, and 
perhaps cannot be excelled ; and it must be recol- 
lected that he brought this system out of chaos. 
Never was the business of any depai'tment in such 
a state of 'perfect confusion as that now under liis 
charge at the time when he was placed at the head 
of it. The open or unsettled accounts, of all sorts, 
must have amounted to nearly fifty millions of dol- 
lars. How great was the labor to cleanse this Au- 
gean stable ! But, mightily supported by the acute 
and indefatigable Mr. Hagner, the old and filthy 
accounts are nearly disposed of." 

Calhoun himself said, with just pride, in a 
report to the President, " The result has been 
that, of the entire amount of money drawn 
from the Treasury in the year 1822 for the 
military service, including the pensions, amount- 
ing to |!4, 571, 961. 94, although it passed through 
the hands of no less than two Inuidred and 
ninety -one disbursing agents, there has not 
been a single defalcation, nor the loss of a cent 
to the government." And the principal em- 
ployees of the department, in taking leave of 
him in a short addi^ess (February 28, 1825), 
bore the following testimony to his administra- 
tion : — 



SECRETARY OF WAR 43 

" The degree of perfection to which you have car- 
ried the several branches of this depai-tment is be- 
lieved to be without ])arallel. . . . From these (your 
personal character and private virtues) have pro- 
ceeded the harmonious interchanges which have 
made the burden of details with which the under- 
signed are charged comparatively light." 

Neither, on the other hand, were severe criti- 
cisms lacking. John Quincy Adams writes in 
his Diary : — 

" The truth is that of the reforms in the War De- 
partment while he [Calhoun] was at its head, the most 
important was the reduction of tlie army from ten 
thousand men to six thousand men, utterly against 
his will, against all the influence that he could exer- 
cise, and to his entire disapprobation ; and all the 
other changes of organization were upon plans fur- 
nished by Generals Brown and Scott, and carried 
through Congress chiefly by the agency of John 
Williams, of Tennessee. Mr. Calhoun had no more 
share of mind in them than I have in the acts of Con- 
gress to which I affix my signature of approbation." 

Even the most thorongh examination of the 
records of the War Department would proba- 
bly not clearly show whether and how far the 
latter assertion is true. For argument's sake, 
however, it may be granted that it is true to the 
letter. Would that really deprive Calhonn of 
all merit in the reforms ? Is it not one of the 



44 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

most indispensable qualities of a statesman to 
know wliere to go for advice, and to follow wise 
counsels ? 

Others were not satisfied with denying that 
the reforms were due to the initiative of the 
Secretary. We read in the same Diary, under 
date of June 2, 1822, that General D. Parker 
said to the writer, " The management of the 
War Department had been inefficient and ex- 
travagant, which was very susceptible of demon- 
stration." The reproach of extravagance was 
not wholly without apparent foundation. Cal- 
houn very properly considered himself in duty 
bound to advocate and promote the interests of 
the army in every way not incompatible with 
the true interests of the United States, and as 
to these he, with equal propriety, refused to 
accept the amount of money to be spent as con- 
stituting the i^rincipal consideration. The best 
is the cheapest, though the first outlay is larger. 
In private life this maxim is nowhere better and 
more commonly understood than by the people 
generally in the United States. The American 
politicians, however, partly for demagogical pur- 
poses and partly from honest stupidity, up to 
this day but too frequently consider it ah ab- 
surdity, though they are in other respects lavish 
to the verge of criminality with the public money. 
Calhoun fully understood that with regard to 



SECRETARY OF WAR 45 

great public interests the miser's policy is the 
worst extravagance. It was, perhaps, not quite 
so certain as Adams thought, that the reduction 
of the army was really a " reform," and the Sec- 
retary undoubtedly deserved much praise for 
taking a decided stand against those who wanted 
to screw down the rations and the wages of the 
privates, and to some extent even those of the 
officers, to the lowest possible point. 

As to " abuses " in other respects, it is too 
much to say that Calhoun is absolutely blame- 
less. In one important instance he has laid 
himself open to the charge of unfair dealing in 
the negotiation and conclusion of a treaty with 
an Indian tribe. Upon the whole, however, he 
advocated a policy towards these wards of the 
nation, which it would have been well for all 
the parties concerned to adopt and pursue with 
undeviating honesty. Even in our days his 
Indian reports might be profitably studied with 
regard as well to the cardinal mistakes com- 
mitted in the Indian policy as to what ought to 
be done. To those who try to lift the responsi- 
bility for the hapless fate of the Indians from 
the shoulders of the American people, and allege 
a decree of Providence, the following testimony 
of Calhoun will be unsavory reading : — 

" As far, however, as civilization may depend on 
education only, without taking into consideration the 



46 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

force of circumstances, it would seem that there is no 
insujierable difficulty in effecting the benevolent in- 
tention of the government. It may be affirmed, al- 
most without qualification, that all the tribes within 
our settlements and near our borders are even soli- 
citous for the education of their children. With the 
exception of the Creeks, they have everywhere freely 
and cheerfully assented to the establishment of schools, 
to which, in some instances, they have contributed. 
The Choctaws, in this respect, have evinced the most 
liberal spirit, having set aside $6000 of their amnesty 
in aid of the schools established among them. The 
reports of the teachers are almost uniformly favor- 
able, both as to the capacity and docility of their 
youths. Their progress appears to be quite equal to 
that of white children of the same age, and they ap- 
pear to be equally susceptible of acquiring habits of 
industry. At some of the establishments a consider- 
able portion of the supplies are raised by the labor 
of the scholars and the teachers. With these indica- 
tions, it would seem that there is little hazard in pro- 
nouncing that, with proper and vigorous efforts, they 
may receive an education equal to that of the labor- 
ing portion of our community." 

Whether his theorizing propensities had any- 
thing to do with his taking such a favorable 
view of the capability and the desire of the In- 
dians to raise themselves out of the darkness 
and sloth of their savage state need not here be 
inquired into. In judging this question Calhoun 



SECRETARY OF WAR 47 

was, at all events, a sufficiently matter-of-fact 
man to see that, in spite of this supposed natural 
capability for becoming civilized, their actual 
civilization was impossible so long as the lead- 
ing principle of the Indian policy hitherto pur- 
sued was not abandoned : — 

" The political relation which they bear to us is by 
itself of sufficient magnitude, if not removed, to pre- 
vent so desirable a state from being attained. We 
have always treated them as an independent people ; 
and however insignificant a tribe may become, and 
however surrounded by a dense white population, so 
long as there are any remains it continues independ- 
ent of our laws and authority. To tribes thus sur- 
rounded, nothing can be conceived more opposed to 
their happiness and civilization than this state of 
nominal independence. It has not one of the ad- 
vantages of real independence, while it has nearly all 
the disadvantages of a state of complete subjugation. 
The consequence is inevitable. They lose the lofty 
spirit and heroic courage of the savage state, without 
acquiring the virtues which belong to the civilized. 
Depressed in spirit and debauched in morals, they 
dwindle away through a wretched existence, a nui- 
sance to the surrounding countiy. Unless some sys- 
tem can be devised gradually to change this relation, 
and with the progress of education to extend over 
them our laws and authority, it is feared that all ef- 
forts to civilize them, whatever flattering appearances 
they may for a time exhibit, must ultimately fail. 



48 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Tribe after tribe will sink, with the progress of our 
settlements and the pressure of our population, into 
wretchedness and oblivion. Such lias been their past 
history, and such, without this change of political 
relation, it must probably continue to be." 

Who would to-day venture to deny that the 
main error of the Americans in dealing with 
the Indian problem is here pointed out with the 
utmost clearness, and that subsequent history 
has fully borne out these assertions? With the 
same keen-sijjhtedness with which Calhoun dis- 
cerned the causes of the evil, he also found the 
means for its gradual cure : — 

" Preparatory to so radical a change in our relation 
towards them, the system of education which has been 
adopted ought to be put into extensive and active 
operation. This is the foundation of all other im- 
provements [?]. It ought gradually to be followed 
with a plain and simple system of laws and govern- 
ment, such as has been adopted by the Cherokees, a 
proper compression of their settlements, and a division 
of landed property. By introducing gradually and 
judiciously these improvements, they will ultimately 
attain such a state of intelligence, industiy, and civil- 
ization as to prepare the way for a complete extension 
of our laws and authority over them." 

It is not probable that Mr. Schurz has ever 
read this long-forgotten report, but whoever has 
been acquainted with it, and has also paid some 



SECRETARY OF WAR 49 

attention to the Indian policy of Mr. Hayes's 
Secretary of the Interior, must have been struck 
by the coincidence of the views of South Caro- 
lina's great doctrinarian and of the modern 
" theorist," who, sixty years later, has dealt more 
successfully with the Indian problem than per- 
haps any other man. 

Of the other charges brought against the 
management of the War Department, but one 
more need be mentioned, and this one because it 
had a long history and made considerable noise 
at the time. We allude to the so-called Rip- 
Rap contract. A government contract for the 
delivery of a large quantity of stones at Old 
Point Comfort had beeil awarded to a certain 
Elijah Mix, a man of ruined commercial repu- 
tation. Calhoun was not aware of this fact 
concerning Mix, and he was satisfied that the 
conditions agreed upon were as favorable for 
the government as any that could be obtained 
at the time; but he had awarded the contract 
without publicly advertising it, as the law re- 
quired. This fact became known when Mix 
failed to fulfil his obligations, and the House 
of Representatives prohibited any further dis- 
bursements from the apj^ropriation made for 
this purpose. This untoward occurrence was 
the more annoying because the chief clerk of 
the department, a brother-in-law of Mix, had, 



50 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

with tlie knowledge of the Secretary, afterwards 
bought a part of the contract. Calhoun had not 
approved of his doing so, warning him that he 
would expose himself to disagreeable insinua- 
tions ; but neither, on the other hand, had he 
forbidden it, since it was not " illegal." After 
Calhoun had become Vice-President, this story 
was revived by an application from Mix for an- 
other government contract. Although his bid 
was the lowest, it was refused, because the history 
of the Rip-Rai^ contract proved him to be an 
irresponsible person. In the course of these 
transactions a private letter from Mix, in which 
he charged Calhoun with having received a 
share of the profits of the Rip-Rap job, found, 
its way into the pi-ess. Calhoun thereupon 
(September 29, 1826) addressed a letter to the 
House of Representatives, " claiming investiga- 
tion by the House " " in its high character of 
grand inquest of the nation," at the same time 
announcing to the Senate that he would not pre- 
side over its deliberations until the vile calumny 
had been duly disposed of, — two steps of doubt- 
ful propriety, and if not unconstitutional, at all 
events extra-constitutional. The House of Re- 
presentatives might easily find itself left with no 
time at all for transacting its legitimate busi- 
ness, if it could be required to grant the claim 
of every government official of a certain rank 



SECRETARY OF WAR 51 

for an investigation of charges privately ^ pre- 
ferred by any private individual ; and it would 
be strange indeed if a United States official 
had the risht to refuse to attend to his con- 
stitutional duties because somebody had been 
pleased to calumniate him. If the Vice-Presi- 
dent might do so why not the President, the 
Justices of the Supreme Court, the President 
pro tempore of the Senate, the Speaker of the 
House, — nay, any member of Congress ? Nei- 
ther of these objections was entirely oveilooked 
at the time, but the House nevertheless appointed 
a committee of investigation. Calhoun was far 
from being satisfied with its proceedings, although 
the repoi't declared, "They are unanimously of 
the opinion that there are no facts which will 
authorize the belief, or even suspicion, that the 
Vice-President was ever interested, or that he 
participated, directly or indirectly, in the profits 
of any contract formed with the government 
through the Department of War." 

No decent person had ever doubted that such 
was the case. The whole scandal was an empty 
bubble, but, like every scandal, it was filled with 
mal-odorous gases. Calhoun would have done 
well to treat it with silent contempt, instead of 

1 Calhoun's assertion that the accusation had been accorded 
a place in the official records of the Department of War was 
proved to be wholly unfounded. 



52 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

pricking it, for neither in Congress nor out of it 
was there a lack of persons who willingly used 
against him everything which they could lay 
their hands on, and the old truth semjier all- 
quid hceret applied to him as well as to any 
other person. In spite of the praise bestowed 
upon his administration of the War Depart- 
ment by all impartial men, many members of 
Congress selected just this department as the 
principal butt of their ill-humor. John Quincy 
Adams writes on June 2, 1822, " The Presi- 
dent had enough to do to support the Secretary 
of War. He had already brought himself into 
collision with both Houses of Congress by sup- 
porting him." Though these animadversions 
were, in the opinion of Adams, not wholly un- 
founded, yet he was far from thinking them 
quite justified. This latter fact is the more to 
be noticed, because Adams cannot be considered 
an entirely unprejudiced witness, though the 
stei-n old man was certainly most honestly con- 
vinced that he judged his colleague with the 
strictest impartiality and justice. 

Adams leaves us in no doubt about the true 
cause of these attacks upon Calhoun : — 

" There was a time during the last session of Con- 
gress when so large a proportion of members was en- 
listed for Calhoun that they had it in contemplation 
to hold a caucus formally to declare him a candidate 



SECRETARY OF WAR 53 

[for the presidency]. But this prospect of success 
roused all Crawford's and Clay's partisans against 
him. The administration of his department was scru- 
tinized with severity, sharpened by personal animos- 
ity and factious malice. Some abuses were discovered, 
and exposed with aggravations. Cavils were made 
against measures of that department in the execution 
of the laws, and brought the President in collision 
with both Houses of Congress. Crawford's news- 
papers commenced and have kept up a course of the 
most violent abuse and ribaldry against him." 

The presidency was at the bottom of these 
acrimonious bickerings, and though Adams 
would never have committed the slightest con- 
scious wrong in order to secure this prize, yet 
he coveted it too ardently to be favorably dis- 
posed toward a prominent rival. 

The estrangement between Adams and Cal- 
houn cannot be ascribed solely to this reason, 
but nobody who has the least knowledge of hu- 
man nature will doubt that this must have had 
a great deal to do with it. When the two 
statesmen came into such close official relation 
by becoming members of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, 
Adams must be considered, if we take his usual 
austerity and chilliness into due consideration, 
to have spoken almost enthusiastically of his 
younger colleague. On January 6, 1818, he 
says, " Calhoun thinks for himself, iudepend- 



54 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ently of all the rest [namely, the other mem- 
bers of the Cabinet], with sound judgment, 
quick discrimination, and keen observation. He 
supports his opinions, too, with powerful elo- 
quence." For several years this good oijinion 
grows ever stronger : — 

" Mr. Calhoun is a man of fair and candid mind, 
of honorable principles, of clear and quick under- 
standing, of cool self-possession, of enlarged philo- 
sophical views, and of ardent patriotism. He is above 
all sectional and factious prejudices more than any 
other statesman of this Union with whom I have ever 
acted. He is more sensitive to the transient manifes- 
tations of momentary ])ublic oj)inion, more afraid of 
the first impressions of the public opinion, than I 
am." 

Thus Adams wi-ote on October 15, 1821 ; 
and again, only twenty-five months later, he 
says, " Calhoun, who in all his movements of 
every kind has an eye to himself ; " and on the 
2d of April, 1824, " Precedent and popularity, 
— this is the bent of his mind. The primary 
principles involved in any public question are 
the last to occur to him. A¥hat Jias heen done 
and what will he said are the Jachin and Boaz 
of his argument." As Adams did not accuse 
Calhoun of any special dishonorable act, this 
change of opinion is certainly so great that the 
explanation for it must be partly sought in the 



SECRETARY OF WAR 55 

last sentence of the following entry in his Diary 
(September 5, 1831) : — 

" Mr. Calhoun was a member of Mr. Monroe's 
administration, and during its early part pursued a 
course from which I anticipated that he would prove 
an ornament and a blessing to his country. I have 
been deeply disappointed in him, and now expect 
nothing from him but evil. His personal relations 
with me have been marked, on his part, with selfish 
and cold-blooded heartlessness." 

It is well known how much inclined Adams 
was to charge with ingratitude and base in- 
trigues those with whom his political life had 
brought him into close personal contact ; and 
furthermore, that the real experiences which he 
actually encountered in this respect were bad 
enough to sour a less distrustful and sweeter 
temper than his. Calhoun, too, he did not 
blame without reason, and, so far as our pre- 
sent sources allow us to judge, by far the larger 
part of the responsibility for the unkind feeling 
between the two rested upon the Carolinian. 
Adams's well-founded complaints against Cal- 
houn, however, chiefly arose after the presiden- 
tial contest had been decided for this time. 
Calhoun professed to think that Monroe should 
be succeeded by a Northern man, and declared 
that, if such should be the case, his first choice 
would be Adams. If he, nevertheless, vigor- 



56 JOHN C. CALHOUN" 

ously pushed his own candidacy, it was, as he 
asserted, because he thought that of all the 
prominent candidates Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, 
had the best chance, and him he would oppose 
to the utmost extent of his power, because he 
not only had no high opinion of his talents, but 
could not respect him as a man. So far as 
Calhoun was concerned, the war was, indeed, 
principally waged between his partisans and 
those of Crawford. " As Calhoun stands most 
in his [Crawford's] way," says Adams's Diary 
on May 2, 1822, " the great burden of his exer- 
tions this session and the last has been against 
the War Department ; while Calhoun, by his 
haste to get at the presidency, has made a cabal 
in his favor in Congress to counteract Ci-awford's 
cabal, and the session has been little more than 
a violent struggle between them ; both, however, 
countenancing the insidious attacks upon the 
Secretary of State." 

Calhoun was thrown in this tussle with his 
crafty colleague of the Treasury. The same 
authority, which is unimpeachable on this ques- 
tion, says, Calhoun's " projected nomination for 
the presidency has met with hardly any coun- 
tenance throughout the Union. The principal 
effect of it has been to bring out Crawford's 
strength, and thus to promote the interest of 
the very man whom alone he professes to op- 



SECRETARY OF WAR 67 

pose. Calhoun now feels his weakness, but is 
not cured of his ambition." Crawford, how- 
ever, was to be still more disappointed than 
Calhoun, and so far as the struggle between 
these two is concerned it was the former infi- 
nitely more than the latter who could, with jus- 
tice, be accused of double-dealing and an unfair 
underofround warfare. Yet no sincere friend of 
Calhoun can look quite undismayed upon this 
chapter of his public life. The presidential 
fever, that typical disease which has proved 
fatal to the true glory of so many statesmen of 
the United States, permeated the very marrow 
of his bones. His ambition did not betray him 
into any dishonorable act, but his eye became 
dimmed with regard to the public weal, because, 
consciously or unconsciously, the fatal consider- 
ation, what effect his course would have upon 
his standing as a candidate, entered more or 
less into every question. His blind admirers, if 
there still be any left, will, of course, not admit 
the truth of this assertion, and will claim that 
to him, too, the celebrated saying of Henry 
Clay applies, that he would rather be right 
than be President. The cool, unbiased stu- 
dent will, indeed, probably come to the conclu- 
sion that there was not much difference between 
the two in this respect; but if there were no- 
thing else to sustain the charge against Calhoun, 



58 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

it would be sufficiently proved by the influence 
which he allowed his presidential aspirations to 
exercise upon his personal relations. The lofty 
independence of mind and truly chivalric spirit, 
which were his real nature, appear blunted. He 
stoops to cover with an approving and admiring 
smile a resentment which is lurking in a corner 
of his heart, and on the other side to break off all 
social intercourse with old and highly respected 
associates, merely because others, whose good 
services he wishes to secure, might not like these 
connections. The champion of slavery, who, with 
head erect, flashing eye, and the deep-toned voice 
of solemn conviction and apostolic infallibility, 
dares the whole civilized world, is every inch a 
rnan^ though a sadly mistaken one ; but the poli- 
tician, who is craving with thirst for the presi- 
dency, is like Ulysses before the suitors, still a 
hero, but with the beggar's rags of human frailty 
and weakness covering the " divine " shoulders. 
Calhoun's hopes rested mainly on his popu- 
larity in Pennsylvania, the grateful affection 
of the army, and the admiration of the young 
men. With them his comparative youth was 
an additional claim on their support ; for it was 
on account of his age that his career seemed to 
shine with uncommon lustre. With his elders, 
however, this was one of the principal objec- 
tions against his being already put at the head 



SECRETARY OF WAR 69 

of the nation. Joseph Story wrote, on Septem- 
ber 21, 1823, to the Hon. Ezekiel Bacon, " I 
have great admiration for Mr. Calhoun, and 
think few men have more enlarged and liberal 
views of the true policy of the national govern- 
ment. But his age, or rather his youth, at the 
present moment, is a formidable objection to 
his elevation to the chair." But even if he had 
stood in the beginning of the sixth instead of 
the fifth decade of his life, his wishes would 
probably not have been gratified. The whole 
movement in his favor was premature, and had, 
at this time, something artificial in it. There 
was, after all, nothing in his career to stir up 
a general enthusiasm, by means of which he 
might have ridden on the crest of a great pop- 
ular wave over the heads of all his competitors 
into the White House. The mass of the peo- 
ple were in a sober mood, verging upon indif- 
ference. The election, therefore, turned much 
less upon principles or great questions of policy 
than upon personal predilections ; and this being 
the case, it soon became evident that Calhoun 
had no chance whatever. Even in, Pennsyl- 
vania, where he owed his popularity partly to 
the vigor with which, in 1816, he had advocated 
a protective tariff, he was dropped. The Har- 
risburg convention nominated Jackson, but gave 
to Calhoun the second place on the ticket as 



60 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

candidate for the vice-presidency. This was a 
solution of the question with which he couhl be 
well satisfied. If he had been from the first the 
weakest candidate for the presidency, he was un- 
doubtedly the strongest for the vice-presidency ; 
and as he had already been spoken of for the 
first place, his election to the second would, in 
the eyes of many people, give him a kind of 
equitable claim to be, in due time, elevated 
" to the chair." Niles's " Kegister " of Novem- 
ber 6, 1824, said, " He is the only candidate in 
whose favor the people have moved, and the 
voice of the people should always be respected." 
Adams had already, in the preceding February, 
spoken of the " courtship of the New England 
Federalists by Mr. Calhoun," and of " the news- 
papers set up in Massachusetts to support Mr. 
Calhoun." Webster wrote to his brother Eze- 
kiel, on March 14 of the same year, " I hope all 
New England will support Mr. Calhoun for the 
vice-presidency. If so, he will probably be 
chosen, and that will be a great thing. He is a 
true man, and will do good to the country in 
that situation." Webster's hopes were not dis- 
appointed. The Jackson and the Adams parties 
united on Calhoun. He received 182 of the 261 
electoral votes, and among these were all the 
New England votes, with the exception of those 
from Connecticut and one from New Hampshire. 



CHAPTER IV 

VICE-PRESIDENT 

As the presidential election turned out, the 
combination vote by which he had been chosen 
put Calhoun into an annoying and very embar- 
rassing position with a view to his own presi- 
dential aspirations. Although Jackson had re- 
ceived a plurality of the electoral votes, Adams 
was elected by the House of Representatives. 
That the House was perfectly justified in doing 
this, not only by the letter, but also by the spirit 
of the Constitution, no person can deny who is 
possessed of common sense and is willing to use 
it. Article XH., section 1, of the Constitution 
would be an absurdity if the House were morally 
obliged to choose the person upon whom a plu- 
rality of the votes had been bestowed. Besides, 
to whom would the preference have to be ac- 
corded, if the person receiving the plurality of 
the electoral votes had not also received a plural- 
ity of the popular votes? The Jackson parti- 
sans, however, were determined to seal their 
ears and eyes hermetically against every sug- 
gestion of reason. They declared Adams's elec- 



62 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tion to be an outrage, a rebellion of the ser- 
vants against the masters, for no matter what 
the Constitution said and required, the " demos 
hrateo principle," as Senator Benton expressed 
it, with a somewhat sorry display of his know- 
ledge of Greek, had been trampled under foot. 
The nomination of Henry Clay, whose influ- 
ence had given the decision in favor of Adams, 
for Secretary of State filled the cup of their 
wrath to overflowing. The cry of " bargain " 
was raised, and though it was proved over and 
over again to be a base calumny, it did not com- 
pletely die out until long after Adams and Clay 
were resting in their graves. 

So the two camps, to whose union in his be- 
half Calhoun owed his elevation, stood arrayed 
in deadly conflict against each other. To re- 
main neutral between them was to put himself 
between anvil and hammer. But with which 
party was he to side? Justice pleaded for 
Adams, ambition spoke eloquently for Jackson. 
Can there be any doubt that this keenest logi- 
cian, who had never been and never became a 
fanatic of the " demos hrateo principle " as it 
was now understood by the Jackson party, took 
a correct view of the constitutional question? 
In 1837, in the debate on the bill for the admis- 
sion of Michigan as a State into the Union, he 
very emphatically reproved his adversaries for 



VICE-PRESIDENT 63 

an argument, according to which "the author- 
ity of numbers sets aside the authority of the 
law and the Constitution." And he added, 
" Need I show that such a principle goes to the 
entire overthrow of our constitutional govern- 
ment, and would subvert all social order?" 
But from the beginning it was evident that the 
majority of the people would declare for Jack- 
son. To support Adams was therefore to post- 
pone to a remote future, if not to renounce al- 
tos-ether, the realization of his wishes. 

The temptation proved too strong for Cal- 
houn. It is possible, and perhaps not unlikely, 
that Adams judged him too harshly in attrib- 
utinsr evervthins: he did and left undone to 
the wish of undermining the administration. 
Thus, for instance, it seems hardly probable 
that the reason for Calhoun's celebrated deci- 
sion, which denied the right of the Vice-Pre- 
sident to call a Senator to order, was really, as 
Adams believed, only unwillingness to check 
Randolph's violent abuse of the administra- 
tion. There was more than enough of the doc- 
trinarian in him to render it likely that he 
honestly thought this power would be, or at 
least could lead to, an abridgment of the liberty 
of speech. This much, however, is certain : 
that the Vice-President was far from anxious 
to sustain the political credit of the President ; 



64 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

nay, though he knew how to maintain the de- 
corum o£ his office, he was in fact one of the 
leaders of the opposition. Mr. Nathan Sargent 
relates that Calhoun had said to him in De- 
cember, 1825, or January, 1826, " Such was the 
manner in which it [Adams's administration] 
came into power that it must he defeated at all 
hazards, regardless of its measuresy Charity 
bids us assume that he deceived himself at the 
time ; but when, instead of ardent desire, bitter 
disappointment became his constant companion, 
whisjiering its suggestions into his ear, the man 
and the statesman would have been ashamed 
to have this sentiment recalled to his memory. 

For a while it seemed as if Calhoun had not 
been betrayed by his ambition into a miscal- 
culation. In the presidential election of 1828, 
Jackson carried everything before him, and 
Calhoun was reelected Vice-President by 171 
electoral votes. As it was understood that 
Jackson did not intend to be a candidate for 
reelection, Calhoun was apparently more likely 
than ever to reach the goal of the White House. 
But in fact, so far as this wish was concerned, 
his star had already passed its zenith. The 
personal relation between Jackson and Cal- 
houn was no longer what it was supposed to 
be. On the surface the waters were still per- 
fectly smooth, but in the hidden deep they 



VICE-PRESIDENT 65 

were agitated to a degree boding no good to 
eitlier Calhoun or the country. In the forma- 
tion of his Cabinet Jackson had recognized the 
claims of Calhoun to his consideration by in- 
viting Mr. Branch, of North Carolina, Mr. Ber- 
rien, of Georgia, and Mr. Ingham, of Pennsylva- 
nia, to seats in it. Calhoun, however, thought 
himself not well treated, because — with the 
exception, perhaps, of Ingham — these were 
not the men he had wished to see in the council 
of tlie President, though they were reputed to be 
his fast friends. Yet this was not a cause of the 
breach which was soon to occur between the two 
men, but merely a symptom of a certain cool- 
ness and an incipient mutual distrust, antedating 
the inauguration of Jackson, and originating in 
the leading political question of the day. 

In 1824 the tariff question had deeply agi- 
tated the whole country. The protectionists had 
carried the day, but only by a slender majority, 
and the opposition, especially in the plantation 
States, had assumed a threatening aspect. Not 
only the expediency and justice of a protective 
tariff was violently contested, but also its con- 
stitutionality was most strenuously denied. The 
excitement reached such a height that the 
" Southron " and the Columbia " Telescope " 
advised the calling of a congress of the opposi=> 
tion States. 



66 JOHX C. CALHOUN 

Calhoun did not approve of the passionate 
war in which the question was treated. Yet 
in the summer of 1S25 he declared at a dinner 
given in Ms honor at Augusta. Georgia, that 
•• Xo one would reprobate more pointedlv than 
myself any concerted union between States for 
interested or sectional objects. I would con- 
sider all such concert as against the spirit of 
our Constitution." The national tendencies still 
prevailed with him, and, as has been proved 
before, he had not yet forsworn the econom- 
ical tenets which he had so zealously defended 
for years. His faith in them had, however, 
begun to be strongly shaken, and after he had 
once entered upon their reexamination he felt 
compelled to become their most irreconcilable 
enemy. 

It was no whim or " srrav theorv '' which 
caused the steadily progressing consolidation of 
the Southern States with regard to the econom- 
ical questions. Slavery, in consequence of the 
enormous development of the cotton culture, 
had become the determining principle of the 
whole politicaL economical, and social life of the 
Southern States, and a protective tariff was ab- 
solutely incompatible with the interests of the 
slave-holders. Indolence and a certain slovenli- 
ness pervaded the whole life of the South, be- 
cause some kinds of honest labor — all that the 



VICE-PRESIDENT 67 

South was pleased to call •' menial services " — 
were dishonored bv slaverv : and therebv all 
work, except the " living by one's wits." had 
come to be looked upon more or less as a dire 
necessitv, instead of the blissful destinv of man. 
Xo white man could ever lose " caste." Xo 
matter how lazy. poor, ignorant, and depraved 
he misrht be. vet, bv virtue of the color of his 
skin, he was a bom member of the aristocracy, 
and absolutely nothing could deprive him of 
his place in it : for the gulf which separated the 
whites from the negroes coidd no more be 
bridged over than that between heaven and hell. 
As the human mind is constituted, no more 
powerful incentive could be offered to the mass 
of the population to sink deeper into nerveless 
shiftlessness. The middle classes are the back- 
bone of every civilized community, and slavery 
prevented the formation of a well-to-do. intel- 
lectual, and progressive middle class more effect- 
ually than any express law cotdd have done. 
To work ones way up from the lower strata 
of society into the real aristocracy of the great 
land-owners, that is the sn^eat slave-holders, was 
an enterprise beset ^^•ith almost insuperable 
difficidties, and the spirit of the commimity 
did not encourajre the undertaking of the ardu- 
ous task. The greater the difference between 
this real aristocracv and the bulk of the white 



68 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

population actually was in every respect, the 
more the former was forced to affect absolute 
equality with the lowliest of their fellow citi- 
zens. These had to be persuaded that their 
interests were identical with those of the rich 
planters ; and, as they had in fact more to suffer 
from the effects of slavery than the slaves them- 
selves, this could only be accomplished by sys- 
tematically instilling into them a dull self-con- 
ceit and suicidal arrogance, which mistook 
shreds and tatters for purple and ermine. They 
looked down upon every other form of civiliza- 
tion with an air of contemptuous superiority, 
which would have been exceedingly ludicrous 
if it had not been infinitely sad. That was 
an education rendering those who were cursed 
with it eminently fit to listen to political dis- 
cussions, and to retail the pretentious and vain 
political wisdom that had been showered upon 
them from the stump, in their idle neighborly 
chats, but making them bad farmers, while un- 
fitting them for everything but farming. The 
population could never become dense, for the 
slave, who had to work without the spur of 
self-interest, tilled the soil, in spite of all over- 
seers and whips, in a manner which, instead of 
improving it, exhausted it in the shortest pos- 
sible time. Those who did the work could 
afford utterly to dispense with thinking, and 



VICE-PRESIDENT 69 

the one head of the master could not supply 
this want, nor did he, in most cases, even try- 
to do so. More and more it became the ride 
that the planter lived on credit, eating up his 
crop before it had been harvested ; and if he 
was rich enough to grow richer, the surplus 
was almost invariably invested in more land 
and slaves. What did it matter if the rich soil 
was speedily turned into a barren waste ! There 
were boundless tracts of land of still richer soil 
left for him to go to, with his " hands." 

In a community thus constituted there is lit- 
tle need of artisans, and still less of efficient and 
skilful ones. " The upper ten thousand " had 
the means to supply their wants from any dis- 
tance ; with the mass of the people neither the 
means nor the wishes extended much beyond 
the necessaries of life ; and, finally, the claims 
of the slaves upon life were confined to a hut, 
coarse raiment, coarse food, and the coarsest 
agricultural implements. The artisan, however, 
is the necessary precursor of the manufacturer. 
Where the standard of civilization is too low to 
require a numerous class of laborers skilled in 
all sorts of handiwork, manufacturing on a large 
scale is as impossible as the putting up of the 
roof before the building of the walls which are 
to support it. Moreover, the landed aristocracy, 
which, under democratic forms, wielded the 



70 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

whole political and social power, could not but 
be averse to the develoi^ment of a middle class 
such as the North and all Europe — with the 
exception of the southeastern parts and Russia 
— had to boast of. There was, in later years, 
much talking and passing of resolutions upon 
the duty and necessity of bringing about the in- 
dustrial and commercial development to which 
the bounties of nature had evidently destined 
the South. At the same time, however, the 
spirit which animated those middle classes in 
the North and in Europe, and which alone 
made them what they were, was denounced and 
abused as a deadly poison, the introduction of 
which into the South was more to be feared 
than the plague. And these denunciations, dic- 
tated by the instinct of self-preservation, were 
but too well founded. AVith the building up 
of commerce and the industrial pursuits, that 
is, with the spreading of culture and prosi:)er- 
ity, the delusion would inevitably vanish that 
the interests of the small slave-holders and the 
rest of the white population coincided with those 
of the great planters. These last would liave 
planted abolitionism at the very doors of their 
mansions, and would have invited it to the seat 
of honor at their hearth-stones. Slavery doomed 
the South to be and to remain an almost ex- 
clusively agricultural country, and, at the same 



VICE-PRESIDENT 71 

time, to use up at a steadily advancing rate the 
capital whieli Providence had bestowed upon 
her in the shape of a fertile soil and a genial 
climate. So long as slavery remained the domi- 
nant interest in the Southern States, they, for 
that very reason, had to be hostile to a home 
industry, if it needed to be artificially nursed 
into existence by high protective tariffs. Every- 
thing they needed of industrial products they 
were obliged to buy from elsewhere, and they 
of course wanted to buy whei'e they could get 
the articles best and cheapest. But the pro- 
tective tariffs forced them to buy inferior Amer- 
ican goods at a higher price, or to pa^' for the 
European wares much more than their real 
value. We need not here inquire into the wis- 
dom of this " American system " from a national 
point of view. Thus much was incontestable, 
that it ran counter to the immediate interest of 
the South, or, to speak more correctly, of the 
great slave-holders. Therefore, as the nature 
of things cannot be changed, this had to remain 
a " fixed fact " so long as the interests of the 
slave-holders held undisputed sway over the 
slave States. If, however, a government pur- 
sues an economical policy, which is permanently 
opposed to the immediate interests of a geo- 
graphical section of the country, this section 
will never acknowledge that the policy is or 



72 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

can be compatible with the true national inter- 
ests. 

Thus far no statesman, either south or north 
of Mason and Dixon's line, had fully grasped 
the question. The plantation States felt the ef- 
fect of the American sj^stem, but they did not 
understand the original cause of the irreconcilable 
conflict of interests between the two sections 
of the Union, nor was any one aware that the 
conflict was irreconcilable to the fullest extent 
of the word. This fact was the more obscured 
because some special interests, as those of the 
sugar and indigo planters, caused an alliance 
between a part of the extreme South and the 
protectionists ; and furthermore, because the bor- 
der States, in consequence of their geographical 
situation and the contest between the slave-hold- 
ing interest and the free-labor system, limped on 
both sides. Yet it was as certain as a proposition 
of Euclid that the conflict was irreconcilable, 
and therefore " irrepressible," because freedom 
and slavery are antagonistic ideas, acting with 
equal energy upon the intellectual, political, 
economical, social, and moral life of a people. 
It has been truly said that " compromise is the 
essence of politics ; " genuine comj^romises, 
however, can only be concluded with regard to 
measures, never between principles, that is, be- 
tween intellectual and moral concej)tions which, 



VICE-PRESIDENT 73 

in their very essence, are the opposite poles of 
an idea. 

In relation to the concrete question, these 
plain truths were, at the time, as little under- 
stood by Calhoun as by any other statesman o£ 
the country. As he was not a member of Con- 
gress during the contest which tei*minated in 
the Missouri compromise, we know but little of 
his position towards the slavery question at this 
memorable period. Enough, however, is known 
of it to prove that he had not as yet deeply re- 
flected upon it. Like all the other members of 
Mr. Monroe's Cabinet, he admitted the constitu- 
tional right of Congress to prohibit slavery in 
the Territories. If he had perceived that this 
was the pivotal point on which the whole slavery 
question was ultimately to turn, and that upon 
its decision the existence of slavery depended, he 
certainly would not have done so. Not that he 
would have wittingly misinterpreted the Con- 
stitution, but he would have seen the whole 
instrument in a totally different light. Already 
the maintenance of slavery was, in his view, an 
incontestable right under the fundamental law 
of the land, and also it was an absolute necessity. 
Already it was a matter of course with him that 
everything else must yield to this consideration. 
Adams writes on February 24, 1820, in his 
Diary : — 



74 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

'" I had some conversation with Calhoun on the 
slave question, pending in Congress. He said he did 
not think it would produce a dissolution of the Union, 
but if it should the South would be from necessity- 
compelled to form an alliance, offensive and defen- 
sive, with Great Britain. 

" I said that would be returning to the colonial 
state. 

" He said. Yes, j^retty much, but it would be forced 
upon them." 

Ten years after Calhoun's death the South 
tried the realization of this jirogramme. Long 
before he had begun to concentrate the whole 
power of his intellect upon the examination of 
this problem, his unerring instinct unveiled the 
remote future. While the thinker and the 
practical statesman but just enter upon the 
task which was to constitute the dark glory of 
his life, the seer points to the end, which is to 
come after his own bones have been turned into 
dust. 

It was not the territorial but the economical 
question which opened the eyes of Calhoun and 
pushed him with irresistible force into a new 
path, so that Adams said rather too little than 
too much when he declared that " his career as 
a statesman has been marked with a series of 
the most flagrant inconsistencies." But he 
wronged him grievously in asserting that " his 



VICE-PRESIDENT 75 

opinions are the sport o£ every popular blast," 
and that lie " veers round in his politics, to be 
always before the wind, and makes his intellect 
the pander of his will." If these reproaches 
ever had any foundation, he mastered this weak- 
ness just while and because he abjured his for- 
mer political faith, Mr. Curtis most justly 
says, in his " Life of Daniel Webster," " Mr. 
Calhoun was a man of deep convictions." His 
veering- round was gradual, because it was not 
done to serve some impure personal end, but 
was the result of an honest change in his opin- 
ions. After it had once begun, it went steadily 
on without pausing for a single moment, be- 
cause lie had taken his stand on a principle, and 
followed up the consequences of it with masterly 
logic and fatalistic sternness of purpose. 

The tariff of 1828 gave birth to bis first great 
political manifesto, the so-called South Carolina 
Exposition. The document issued by the legis- 
lature of that State does not concern us here ; 
we have only to deal with Calhoun's original 
draft of it. Nor is it now of any interest 
whether his economical reasoning was correct 
or fallacious ; only the political conclusions 
which he drew from his economical premises 
are of historical importance. The essential 
point of these economical premises is that, ac- 
cording to him, there is a permanent conflict of 



76 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

interest with regaixl to the tariff policy between 
the " staple States " and the rest of the Union. 
The reason of this is simply that the staple 
States are exclusively devoted to agriculture, 
and will forever remain purely agricultural com- 
munities, because " our soil, climate, habits, and 
peculiar labor are adapted " to this "our ancient 
and favorite pursuit." This was the wizard's 
wand which worked such an astonishing meta- 
morphosis in the mind of Calhoun that one is 
tempted to believe that a new man, whom we 
have never met before, has stepped upon the 
stage. In the beginning of his career we have 
heard him praised as absolutely free from sec- 
tional prejudices ; and we have seen that he, in- 
deed, judged everything from a national point of 
view, hardly deigning to answer the objections 
which legal quibbles, party passion, and local 
interests raised against what the welfare and the 
honor of the " nation " demanded. But now he 
speaks of " our political system resting on the 
great principle involved in the recognized diver- 
sity of geographical intei*ests in the community," 
and adopts this for the rest of his life as the 
basis of all his political reasoning and his whole 
political activity. The " Exposition " fills fifty- 
six printed pages, but it does not contain a 
single sentence bearing directly on the national 
interest. This point is only incidentally men- 



VICE-PRESIDENT 77 

tioned, with the assertion that the pretended 
unconstitutional usurpation of the Federal gov- 
ernment, which has called forth the "• Exposi- 
tion," seriously endangers the political morality 
and the liberty of the republic. The national 
statesman is transformed into the champion of 
the interests and the rights of the minority, and 
the reason of the change is that the minority is 
a geographical section with a " peculiar labor " 
system, which creates a " recognized diversity " 
of interests. His first question is no more, What 
ought the Fedei'al government to do, and what 
has it the right to do ? but. What effect has the 
policy of the Federal government on the staple 
States in their peculiar situation, and what con- 
stitutional means have they for counteracting 
the pernicious effects of the Federal policy ? The 
corner-stone of the political edifice of the United 
States is henceforth to him no more the prin- 
ciple that the majority is to rule, but that the 
minority has the right and the power to check- 
mate the majority, whenever it considers the 
Federal laws unconstitutional ; in other words, 
whenever different views are entertained about 
the powers conferred by the Constitution upon 
the Federal government, those of the minority 
were to prevail, provided it was deemed worth 
while to have recourse to the last " constitu- 
tional " resort. 



78 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

The Articles of Confederation had been sup- 
planted by the Constitution in order to render 
the Union " more perfect." If this purpose 
was to be fulfilled, the Union must continue to 
grow more perfect, for where life is there is 
also development. Either it was an illusion 
that the historical destiny of the North Amer- 
ican continent could be fulfilled by welding it 
into one Union composed of many republican 
commonwealths, and then the Union would, 
sooner or later, fall to pieces, no matter what 
the Constitution said ; or the authors of the Con- 
stitution had correctly understood the genius of 
the American people, and had skilfully adapted 
their work to the peculiar natural conditions 
of the country, and in that event the States 
would steadily go on growing together as the 
parts of an organic whole, no matter what this 
or that man, or even this or that section, might 
be pleased to proclaim as the correct interpre- 
tation of the Constitution. Calhoun had been 
so well aware of this fact that a favorite argu- 
ment of his in support of the policy advocated 
by him had been the favorable effect it would 
have upon the " consolidation of the Union." 
Now there was in the whole political dictionary 
no term more abhorred by him than this. The 
sovereignty of the States, in the fullest sense 
of the term, is declared to be the essential prin-^ 



VICE-PRESIDENT 79 

ciple of the Union ; and it is not only asserted 
as an incontestable right, but also claimed as an 
absolute political necessity in order to protect 
the minority against the majority. The author- 
ity quoted for this opinion is not any section of 
the Constitution, but the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky resolutions, with their doctrine, that the 
States have the right " to interpose " when the 
Federal government is guilty of a usurpation, 
because, as there is no common judge over 
them, they, as the parties to the compact, have 
to determine for themselves whether it has been 
violated. This theory is brought by Calhoun 
into the more precise formula that each State 
has the right to " veto " a Federal law which it 
deems unconstitutional. Whether such a veto 
is to be an injunction against the execution of 
the law throughout the Union, or only in the 
individual State, and, in the latter case, what is 
to become of the principle that different Federal 
laws cannot prevail in different parts of the 
Union, we do not learn from the " Exposition." 
We are only told that the veto ought to be pro- 
nounced by a convention as representing the 
sovereignty of the State, but it is left undecided 
whether it might not also be done by the legis- 
latui'e. 

Calhoun was very far from having completely 
killed the old national Adam in his bosom. He 



80 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

therefore could not entirely suppress the feel- 
ing that, if this theory were to be put into prac- 
tice, it might lead after all to very strange con- 
sequences with regard to the legislative activity 
of the Federal government ; nay, with regard 
to the life of the Union itself. So he hastened 
to show that the veto was by no means so ter- 
rible a thing as it might appear, at the first 
glance. In adopting the Constitution the States 
had so far abandoned their sovereignty that 
three fourths of them could change the com- 
pact as they pleased. If, therefore, it was de- 
sired that the Federal government should have 
the contested power, it was only necessary that 
three fourths of the States should say so, and 
all the damage done would be that the exercis- 
ing of the jiower had been postponed for a 
while. How was it that these penetrating eyes 
failed to see that the Federal legislation might 
thereby be turned into a bulky machine, more 
fatal to healthy political life than Juggernaut's 
car to the fanatical worshippers ? But leaving 
this practical objection aside, how was it that 
he failed to see that thereby one fourth of the 
States wouLl get the power to change the Con- 
stitution at will? Suppose — and the case miglit 
certainly very easily happen — that the Federal 
government exercises a power which has been 
actually granted to it by the Constitution, and 



VICE-PRESIDENT 81 

that a State sees fit to veto the law, that the 
question, as must be the case, is submitted to 
all the States, and the objecting State is sup- 
ported by one fourth of the whole number. Is 
any dialectician sharp enough to disprove the 
fact that, in such a case, the Constitution, 
thouo-h not a sinsle letter is either added or 
erased, has been actually changed by one fourth 
of the States, though that instrument expressly 
requires the consent of at least three fourths to 
effect the slightest change ? "Working in de- 
fence of the peculiar interests of the slave-hold- 
ers with the lever of the state sovereignty, Cal- 
houn thus begins to subvert the foundation of 
the whole fabric of the Constitution. 

The practical conclusion to which Calhoun 
came was, " that there exists a case which 
would justify the interposition of this State, in 
order to compel the general government to 
abandon an unconstitutional power, or to ap- 
peal to this high authority [the States] to con- 
fer it by express grant." He, however, deemed 
it " advisable " "to allow time for further con- 
sideration and reflection, in the hope that a re- 
turning sense of justice on the part of the ma- 
jority, when they come to reflect on the wrongs 
which this and the other staple States have suf- 
fered, and are suffering, may repeal the obnox- 
ious and unconstitutional acts, and thereby pre- 



82 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

vent the necessity of interposing the veto of the 
State." 

Daniel Webster wrote on April 10, 1833, to 
Mr. Perry, " In December, 1828, I became 
thoroughly convinced that the plan/)f a South- 
ern confederacy had been received with favor 
by a great many of the political men of the 
South." If this suspicion was well founded 
the above-quoted sentence of the Exposition 
proves that Calhoun, at all events, was not 
privy to such a jilot. He not only had no de- 
sire to force a crisis upon the country, but he 
had strong hopes that it would be avoided, and 
he plainl}^ stated his reasons for these hopes. 
He was " further induced, at this time, to re- 
commend this course, under the hope that the 
great political revolution, which will disj^lace 
from power on the 4th of March next those 
who have acquired authority by setting the will 
of the people at defiance, and which will bring 
in an eminent citizen, distinguished for his ser- 
vices to the country and his justice and pa- 
triotism, may be followed up, under his influ- 
ence, with a complete restoration of the pure 
principles of our government." But it is to be 
noted that he meant exactly what he said, nei- 
ther more nor less. He hoped that by the in- 
fluence of Andrew Jackson the protectionists 
would be defeated, but he did not feel quite 



VICE-PRESIDENT 83 

sure of it ; and if his hopes should not be real- 
ized, he had explicitly stated what, in his opin- 
ion, ought to be done. In order to leave no 
doubt whatever on this point, he followed up 
the last-mentioned sentence with the declaration 
that, in thus recommending delay, he wished it 
" to be distinctly understood that neither doubts 
of the rightful power of the State nor appre- 
hension of consequences" constituted the small- 
est part of his motives. 

Calhoun's reason for not trusting too impli- 
citly in Jackson's influence to bring about a re- 
volution in the economical 23olicy of the Fed- 
eral government was the double programme 
on which the general had been elected. In the 
South he had been sustained as a friend of 
" Southern interests," i. e., as an anti-protec- 
tionist ; while in New York, Pennsylvania, and 
the West he had been supported as the firm 
friend of the tariff and of internal imjDrove- 
ments. The inauo-ural address touched this 
leading question of the day but very slightly, 
and with such cautious vagueness that neither 
party was satisfied, because neither knew what 
it had to expect from the new President. The 
first annual message, which had been looker! for 
with keen expectation, gave no more satisfac- 
tion to either. All that could be safely inferred 
from it was that the President would gladly see 



84 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

some duties reduced, but it contained nothing 
to justify the hope of the South that he woukl, 
on principle, throw his whole weight into the 
scales against the entire protective system. 
Calhoun even saw a direct bid for the favor of 
the protectionists in the proposal to divide the 
expected yearly surplus among the States for 
the execution of internal imjjrovements. He 
began to look upon the President with a certain 
distrust, and this feeling was fully reciprocated 
by Jackson. Those who had no opportunity to 
observe the actors closely, while the curtain was 
down, did not, however, become aware of the 
fact that an ominous disturbance in the friendly 
relations between the two first officers of the 
government had occurred, until the society of 
the capital had begun to become convulsed by 
the trag-i-comical intermezzo of the Mrs. Eaton 
affair. 

No serious historian will be expected to enter 
lipon the details of this once celebrated case of 
the American chronique scandaleuse. It is the 
less necessary to do so because it in fact only 
helped on and accelerated the important polit- 
ical events, of which it has frequently been said 
to have been the main cause. It suffices to re- 
call to the memory of the reader that Mrs. 
Eaton was reported to have had before her sec- 
ond marriage illicit intercourse with her present 



VICE-PRESIDENT 85 

husband, the Secretary of War, and that there- 
fore many hidies refused to admit her into their 
company. Jackson, prompted partly by his 
generous temper, and partly by the bitter recol- 
lections of what had been said against his own 
wife, exerted all his influence to break the social 
ban under which the wife of his Secretary and 
personal friend had been put. The ladies, how- 
ever, were not to be dictated to, and they car- 
ried the day against the victor of New Orleans. 
Afjainst the wives of the members of his Cab- 
inet even the President's iron will was power- 
less, and Calhoun, the Vice-President, according 
to his own statement, considered it his duty 
to take the lead in this determined opposition 
against the attempt to force the suspected lady 
upon society. Van Buren, on the contrary, who 
was a widower and led a bachelor's life, even 
surpassed his wonted politeness in his treatment 
of Mrs. Eaton, Jackson, however, was utterly 
unable to draw the correct line between private 
and public affairs whenever his feelings were en- 
listed in a cause. Van Buren therefore greatly 
ingratiated himself with the President by assid- 
uously paying his court to Mrs. Eaton, while 
Calhoun, by strictly adhering to the rigid 
course of morality, which has always distin- 
guished the family life of South Carolina, had 
to pay for it by a corresponding decline in Jack- 



8G JOHN C. CALHOUN 

son's good will. Both Van Buren and Calhoun 
ardently wished to succeed the genei'al in the 
presidency, and neither of tliem failed to see 
that Jackson's favor might go far towards de- 
ciding who should be the next occupant of the 
White House. Moreover, Calhoun was serving 
his second term as Vice-President. All the 
precedents were against his presenting himself 
once more as a candidate for reelection, and he 
justly apprehended that to return for four years 
into private life might postpone the realization 
of his long-deferred hopes ad calendasGrcecas. 
He was therefore most anxious that Jackson 
should serve but one term, while, for the same 
reason, Van Buren and his partisans were not 
less zealous advocates of Jackson's reelection. 

So, while everything was yet quiet and 
smooth on the surface, the mine was dug and 
charged ; one spark sufficed to lead to a great 
catastrophe. Calhoun himself remained to the 
end of his life firmly convinced that Van Buren 
was the engineer who had constructed the in- 
genious battery for the explosion. Though 
there is no documentary proof for it, yet it can 
hardly be doubted that Van Buren did in fact 
take part in devising the scheme ; but he was 
too wary and too cunning in such transa(!tions 
ever to do himself what could be done as well, 
or even better, by some devoted friend. Ad^ 



VICE-PRESIDENT 87 

ams, however, writes on January 30, 1831, 
" Wirt concurred entirely with me in opinion 
that this was a snare deliberately spread by 
Crawford to accomplish the utter ruin of Cal- 
houn." The opportunities for these two men 
to be well informed were too good not to re- 
quire that the greatest weight be accorded to 
their opinion. Besides, the powder for the 
petard was confessedly furnished by Craw- 
ford's guilty indiscretion. He divulged the 
secrets of certain of the Cabinet meetings of 
Monroe's administration, which filled Jackson's 
mind with deep hatred and contempt against 
Calhoun. If we were writing the biography of 
Andrew Jackson, it would be necessary, in this 
connection, to review the whole controversy 
concerning the general's conduct in the Semi- 
nole war. But in a life of Calhoun we can 
with propriety dispense with that thankless 
task, confining our remarks to a single point in 
it, and even that may be treated with great 
brevity. 

In the course of his operations against the 
Seminoles, General Jackson had not only crossed 
the Florida boundary, as he was authorized to 
do in case the object of the campaign could not 
otherwise be attained, but he had forcibly taken 
possession of the Spanish forts at St. Mark's 
and Pensacola. In July, 1818, the question as 



88 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

to whether and how far these high-handed pro- 
ceedings should be sustained by the administra- 
tion formed the subject of long and earnest 
discussions by Mr. Monroe and his Cabinet. 
The general had acted in good faith. A letter 
to the President, in which he communicated his 
intentions, having accidentally remained unan- 
swered, he mistook the silence for tacit consent, 
and afterwards, without regard to dates, even 
adduced a subsequent letter of the Secretary of 
War to a thiixl person as proof that the govern- 
ment had given him full discretion. This was 
by no means the view which Mr. Monroe and 
his Cabinet took of the matter. Even Adams, 
who went farthest in supporting the general's 
course, did not undertake to justify it wholly by 
rules of international law, but deemed it neces- 
sary to adduce considerations of high policy for 
his opinion. Calhoun, as Adams states in his 
Diary, " principally bore the argument against 
me, insisting that the capture of Pensacola was 
not necessary upon principles of self-defence, 
and therefore was both an act of war against 
Spain and a violation of the Constitution ; that 
the administration, by approving it, would take 
all the blame of it upon themselves ; that by 
leaving it upon his responsibility they would 
take away from Spain all pretext for war and 
for resorting to the aid of other European pow- 



VICE-PRESIDENT 89 

ers, — they would also be free from all reproach 
of having violated the Constitution, — that it 
was not the menace of the Governor of Pensa- 
eola that had determined Jackson to take that 
place ; that he had really resolved to take it 
before ; that he had violated his orders, and 
upon his own arbitrary will set all authority at 
defiance." He therefore demanded an inves- 
tigation of the general's conduct ; but although 
" all the members of the Cabinet, except myself 
[Adams] are of opinion that Jackson acted not 
only without, but against, his instructions," and 
"that he has committed war upon Spain," a 
middle course was finally adopted, which, with- 
out directly and formally disavowing the gen- 
eral, satisfied Spain. 

Jackson knew that his conduct had not met 
with the approval of the administration, but he 
had heretofore believed that the contemplated 
proceedings against him had been principally 
urged by Crawford, and that, on the other 
hand, Calhoun had exerted himself in his de- 
fence. Now, however, a letter from Crawford 
to Senator Forsyth (April 30, 1830), which had 
been written for this purpose, was put into his 
hands, and undeceived him on the latter point, 
at the same time giving a false and malicious 
coloring to the whole transaction. If any mem- 
ber of the administration had been animated 



90 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

by a really /lostile spirit against the general, it 
had been Crawford ; yet Crawford now pre- 
tended that, upon learning all the attending cir- 
cumstances, he had become satisfied that Jack- 
son was fully excused, if not justified. And 
the weight which he thus shook from his own 
shoulders he shifted upon the back of Calhoun, 
by the bold exaggeration that the latter had 
persistently demanded the lyunishment of the 
general. 

These revelations threw Jackson into a tow- 
ering passion. On May 13 he sent Crawford's 
letter with a curt note to Calhoun, demanding 
"to learn of you whether it be possible that 
the information given is correct." Calhoun 
might have declined to answer the interroga- 
tory, because nobody had a right to demand 
from him a confession concerning what had 
passed in the Cabinet meetings of the adminis- 
tration, of which he had been a member. He, 
however, replied with a long statement and 
elaborate argument, which had too much the 
character of a justification of his conduct and 
of an impeachment of Crawford's behavior and 
motives. Though he proved that Jackson could 
and ought to have known that the proceedings 
in Florida were, at the time, considered by him 
(Calhoun) transgressions of the orders issued 
from his department, and that he had, without 



VICE-PRESIDENT 91 

any personal hostility, acted according to Lis 
convictions of duty, for which he owed no ac- 
count to the general either then or now, all such 
arguments did not avail him anything, and his 
dignity would have been better served by tak- 
ing higher ground. Most truly did he say, " It 
was an affair of mere official duty, involving 
no question of private enmity or friendship ; " 
but that was a view which Andrew Jackson was 
absolutely unable to understand. In theory he 
may have admitted the possibility of an honest 
difference of opinion, but whatever related to 
himself he could only see in an eminently per- 
sonal light ; and if any one whom he deemed 
his friend had the misfortune and audacity to 
differ with him, the brand of Cain was indelibly 
stamped on that man's forehead. All Calhoun 
got for his pains was violent, impudent, and 
absurd abuse, mingled with ludicrous pathos. 
He was charged with " secretly endeavoring to 
destroy my reputation," while the poor victim 
" had too exalted an opinion of your honor and 
frankness to believe for one moment that you 
could be capable of such deception. ... I re- 
peat, I had a right to believe that you were my 
sincere friend, and, until now, never expected 
to have occasion to say of you, in the language 
of Caesar, Et tit, Brute ! " 

The reproach of a lack of frankness was, 



92 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

however, not quite unfouncled, but it was woro, 
rather than heretofore, that Calhoun was guilty 
of it. Pie declared in his reply of May 29, " I 
neither questioned your patriotism nor your mo- 
tives." Adams's Diary, that invaluable source 
of historical information, furnishes the proof 
that this was not strictly true. On July 14, 
1818, Adams gives it as his impression that 
" Calhoun, the Secretary of War, generally of 
sound, judicious, and comprehensive mind, seems 
in this case to be personally offended with the 
idea that Jackson has set at naught the instruc- 
tions of the department." Again, in a short 
synopsis of a conversation between himself and 
Calhoun, on March 2, 1831, two weeks after the 
publication of the correspondence with Jackson, 
Adams writes, — 

"He said, too, that his remark in the Cabinet meet- 
ing, in reply to my argument that Jackson's taking 
the Spanish forts had been defensive, to meet the 
threats of Masot, namely, that Jackson had deter- 
mined to take the province before, was not with al- 
lusion to the letter of January 6, 1818,^ but to a rumor 
that Jackson had been personally interested in a pre- 
vious land sjjeculation in Pensacola." 

This breach with Jackson was the death- 
blow to the presidential aspirations of Calhoun. 

* Jackson's letter to the President, before alluded to, which 
had accidentally remained unanswered. 



VICE-PRESIDENT 93 

Mr. Wirt thought " that he had blasted his 
prospects of future advancement forever," and 
Adams called him " a drowning man," at the 
same time, however, asserting that he " never- 
theless entertains very sanguine hopes." Per- 
haps this expression was a little too strong, but 
at all events Calhoun maintained his candidacy 
a while longer, although he not only had to 
encounter the enmity of Jackson's partisans, 
but could also no longer count upon the support 
of New England, which had become ill-disposed 
towards him by reason of the political course of 
his friends in Congress. It was rumored that 
Clay's Western friends were inclined to take 
him up, in case tliey should find the chances 
of their own champion desperate, and Calhoun 
liimseK seems to have thought it possible that, 
if he should conclude to run against Jackson, 
the election might revert once more to the 
House of Representatives. But the drift of 
public opinion was too strong not to destroy 
these illusions very speedily. Calhoun's disap- 
pointment was, undoubtedly, very bitter ; but 
those strangely misjudged the man who attrib- 
uted to it the terrible energy with which he 
henceforth pursued the course upon which he 
had entered with the South Carolina Exposi- 
tion. He was not driven by disappointed am- 
bition into a sectional policy with a view to- 



94 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

wards tearing the Union asunder, in order to 
become the chief of one half, because he could 
not be the chief of the whole. Slavery had 
split the Union into two geographical sections, 
and, in spite of everything man could do, the 
rent widened into a chasm, and the chasm into 
an abyss. That was not the work of Calhoun, 
but the unavoidable consequence of the fact 
that the Union was composed of free and slave- 
holding States. He could not have done it if 
he had wanted to, and he was as far as any man 
from wanting to do it. The only effect of the 
disappointment of his ambition was the quick 
dispersion of the mist which had hitherto been 
lying over his eyes as over those of the whole 
people. The shackles of minor considerations 
and personal interests began to fall from his 
limbs. Embittered but free, he henceforth pur- 
sued his coiirse, forming alliances without heed- 
ing the claims of old or new party connections, 
and not afraid to encounter the enmity of any 
one ; never ceasing to love and cherish the 
Union, but learning to love slavery better and 
better. He was not a demi-god, but a man, 
having his full share of human weakness and 
littleness. But nature had not only endowed 
him with a powerful brain ; the marrow of his 
bones and the core of his heart were sound. 
Not for the world would he have betrayed his 



VICE-PRESIDENT 95 

country, and even slavery could not turn him 
into a dark conspirator. Yet it has been pre- 
tended that he was guilty of such betrayal and 
conspiracy merely in order to see the title Pre- 
sident prefixed to his name. Those who, like 
Senator Benton, honestly believed this, stum- 
bled into an egregious blunder, because, in spite 
of all their keen-sightedness, they remained 
blind to the fact that the wedlock between sla- 
very and freedom could not be a lasting one. 
What they attributed to the traitorous machi- 
nations of his disappointed ambition would have 
happened, even though out of every fibre of 
John C. Calhoun a Henry Clay, a Daniel Web- 
ster, and a Thomas Benton had been made. It 
was not a crime, but it was his misfortune, that 
he saw everything relating to slavery with such 
appalling clearness, discerning, with unerring 
eye, the last consequences at the first glance. 

As soon as all hope had to be given up that 
the protective system could be destroyed with 
Jackson's help in the regular parliamentary way, 
Calhoun resumed the contest at the point where 
he had left it with the South Carolina Expo- 
sition. His second manifesto — " Address to 
the People of South Carolina," dated Fort Hill, 
July 2G, 1831 — was published in the "Pendle- 
ton Messenger." The whole question of the 
relation which the States and the general gov- 



96 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ernment bear to each other, i. e., of state sov- 
ereignty, was reargued. The key-note of his 
whole argument and of his whole subsequent 
political life is the assertion, " The great dis- 
similarity and, as I must add, as truth compels 
me to do, contrariety of interests in our country 
. . . are so great that they cannot be subjected 
to the unchecked will of a majority of the whole 
without defeating the great end of government, 
without which it is a curse, — justice." This 
is the real broad foundation of his doctrine 
that the Union could never have a safe founda- 
tion upon any other legal basis save state sov- 
ereignty, which enables the minority to defend 
themselves against usurpations. No new argu- 
ment is adduced either on the constitutional or 
on the economical question, but the whole rea- 
soning is closer and the language is more direct 
and bolder. The Federal government has dwin- 
dled down to a mere " agent " of the " sovereign 
States," and the veto power of these is termed 
" nullification." 

Calhoun had, of course, not expected to con- 
vince his adversaries. What he wanted was to 
mark off the old, widely trodden road with the 
utmost precision, so that in future no gap could 
be reasoned into it, and to consolidate his own 
party, and to inspire it with resolution to live 
up to its profession of faith. The apprehen- 



VICE-PRESIDENT 97 

sion that this would be done was great enough 
to dampen the ardor of the protectionists when 
the tariff question came again before Congress. 
The duties were considerably reduced, but the 
plantation States were not satisfied either with 
the amount or with the manner in which the 
reduction was effected. South Carolina re- 
ceived the new tariff as a declaration that the 
protective system was "the settled policy of 
the country," and on August 28, 1832, Calhoun 
issued his third manifesto, determined to have 
the die cast without further delay. This letter 
to Governor Hamilton, of South Carolina, is the 
final and classical exposition of the theory of 
state sovereignty. Nothing new has ever been 
added to it. All the later discussions of it 
have but varied the expressions and amplified 
the argument on particular points. Thirty 
years later the programme laid down in it was 
carried out by the South piece by piece, and 
the justification of the Southern course was 
based, point by point, upon this argument. 

The late champion of a national policy and 
of consolidating measures now takes for his 
starting-point the assertion that, "so far from 
the Constitution being the work of the American 
people collectively, no such political body, either 
now or ever, did exist." The historical review 
by which he tried to prove this assertion con- 



98 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tains two seemingly slight, but in fact very 
important, errors. The colonies did not "by 
name and enumeration" declare themselves free 
and independent States, nor is the Constitution 
declared " to be hinding between the States so 
ratifying," but Article VII. of the Constitution 
reads, " The ratification of the conventions of 
nine States shall be sufficient for the establish- 
ment of this Constitution between the States so 
ratifying." From these historic " facts " he 
draws the conclusion " that there is no direct 
and immediate connection between the individual 
citizens of a State and the general government." 
Strange indeed! for the authors and the advocates 
of the Constitution thought that the most im- 
portant change effected in the political structure 
of the Union, by substituting the Constitution 
for the Articles of Confederation, was exactly 
the establishment of direct and immediate con- 
nections between the individual citizens and the 
Federal government ; and not a single day passed 
in which a great number of citizens were not 
actually brought into contact with the Federal 
government, in the courts, in the custom-houses, 
in the departments, etc., without being reminded 
in any way whatever that they were citizens of 
this or that particular State. If the relation 
between the individual citizen and the Federal 
government were, in fact, exclusively through the 



VICE-PRESIDENT 99 

State, then, indeed, it might have been true that 
" it belongs to the State as a member of the 
Union, in her sovereign capacity in convention, 
to determine definitely, as far as her citizens 
are concerned, the extent of the obligation which 
she has contracted ; and if, in her opinion, the 
act exercising the power [in dispute] be uncon- 
stitutional, to declare it null and void, which 
declaration w^ould be obligatoiy on her citizens." 
The Federal government is floating in the air 
without a straw of its own to rest upon, the 
sport of the sovereign fancies of the States. 
"Not a provision can be found in the Consti- 
tution authorizing the general government to 
exercise any control whatever over a State by 
force, by veto, by judicial process, or in any 
other form, — a most important omission, de- 
signed, and not accidental." And the actual 
state of the case corresponds with the right, 
for " it would be impossible for the general 
government, within the limits of the States, to 
execute, legally, the act nullified, while, on the 
other hand, the State would be able to enforce, 
legally and peaceably, its declaration of nullifi- 
cation," Yet nullification is declared to be " the 
great conservative principle " of the Union. 

Undoubtedly, there is method in this madness, 
but madness it is nevertheless ; for the whole 
theory is neither more nor less than the system- 



100 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

atization of anarchy. The Union is constructed 
upon the principle that the essence of the idea 
/State, the supremacy of the will which has to 
act for the whole, — that is, in a free State, the 
government of the laws, — is b}'^ principle ex- 
cluded from its structure. If there ever w^as an 
illustration of the " tragedy of Hamlet with the 
part of Hamlet left out," here it is. This vast 
republic, to which the future belonged more 
than to any other state of the globe, was to be 
a shooting star, a political monster without a 
supreme will, because this could be lodged no- 
where with safety. The resort to force — " should 
folly or madness ever make the attempt " — 
would be utterly vain, if at all possible, for "it 
would be ... a conflict of moral, not physical, 
force." This moral force, however, was also but 
a rope of sand, if a sovereign State should so 
will it. Even a decision by three fourths of the 
States would by no means be unconditionally 
binding upon all the members of the Union. 
" Should the other members undertake to grant 
the power nullified, and should the nature of the 
power be such as to defeat the object of the 
association or union, at least as far as the member 
nullifying is concerned, it would then become an 
abuse of power on the part of the principals, and 
thus present a case where secession would ap])ly." 
The Union was to have laws only so long and just 



VICE-PRESIDENT 101 

SO far as every constituent member of it was 
pleased to submit to them. In his great political 
testament, the " Disquisition on Government," 
Calhoun directly says, "Nothing short of a 
negative, absolute or in effect, on the part of 
the government [!] of a State can possibly pro- 
tect it against the encroachments of the united 
government of the States, whenever [!] their 
powers come in conflict." And as even this 
might prove not to be a sufficient protection, 
each State was to have, in the form of the right 
of secession, a most absolute veto against all 
its co-States. What a nice checker-board the 
United States might become, if the exercise of 
this right should get to be the political fashion ! 
Suppose the States at the mouths of the great 
streams, and four or five others commanding a 
part of their navigable waters, should secede, 
what a pretty picture the map of the United 
States would present ! Why, the German Bund 
of bygone days would have had a most for- 
midable rival. Calhoun himself would have 
turned with disgust and contempt from the idea 
of thus bridging over the craggy actualities of 
life with the cobwebs of an over-subtle logic, if 
he had conceived the possibility of his theory 
being ever put into practice in tins manner. It 
seemed to him so plausible only because he was 
fully conscious of the fact that, if it were ever 



102 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

put to the test, the Union would split into two 
solid geographical sections. Never would he 
have stultified his intellect by this ingenious 
system atization of anarchy, if he could not have 
written, — 

*' Who, of any party, with the least pretension to 
candor, can deny that on all these points [the great 
questions of trade, of taxation, of disbursement and 
appropriation, and the nature, character, and power 
of the general government] so deeply important, no 
two distinct nations can be more opposed than this 
[the staple States] and the other sections ? " 



CHAPTER V 

THE SENATE 

On" November 24 the South Carolina con- 
Tention passed the nullification ordinance, which . 
was to take effect on February 1, 1833. Cal- 
houn at once resigned the vice-presidency, in 
order to take the seat in the United States Sen- 
ate, vacated by General Hayne, who had been 
elected Governor of South Carolina. Hun- 
dreds of eyes closely scrutinized the face of the 
" great Nullifier " as he took the oath to sup- 
port the Constitution, but the firm repose of his 
countenance dispelled all doubts of his sincer- 
ity. His personal courage, however, was seri- 
ously questioned by many. Benton and others 
assixre us that he finally yielded, because he had 
been informed that Jackson had threatened to 
hang him as high as Haman. This dramatic 
anecdote has been repeated so often that the 
mass of the American people have come to be- 
lieve it as an undoubted historic fact. That 
Jackson may have uttered some such threat is 
probable enough, but Calhoun never betrayed 
such a weakness of nerves as to justify a sus- 



104 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

picion that an empty threat could wipe from his 
brains all remembrance of the Constitution. 
And an empty threat this most certainly was, 
if it was ever made. Jackson was not now 
the general commanding in the wilds of Florida, 
but President of the United States ; and Cal- 
houn was not an Arbuthnot or Ambrister, but 
a senator of the United States. The section of 
the Constitution, however, has yet to be written 
which empowers the President to hang any 
man, and especially a United States senator. 
The hanging story may have been good enough 
at the time for political piirposes, but it de- 
serves no place in history. Yet Calhoun knew 
well enough that not only he personally, but 
also his State, was playing a high game, in which 
eventually powder and lead, and perhaps even 
the hangman, upon the requisition of the courts 
or of a court-martial, might speak the last word. 
He therefore did yield, but only because Con- 
gress and Jackson — notwithstanding the justly 
celebrated " proclamation " — yielded still more. 
The explanations with which Calhoun accom- 
panied his affirmative vote on a certain provision 
of the tariff bill, after he had declared it un- 
constitutional, were vain talk ; he bent his proud 
neck, because Mr. Clayton had left him no al- 
ternative except to submit, or to let the whole 
compromise fail. On the other hand, however, 



THE SENATE 105 

the new tariff conceded in the main the de- 
mands of South Carolina, and the so-called 
Force Bill, which gave the President the means 
to subdue by force of arms any resistance to 
the laws of the Union, was only passed after 
the passage of the tariff bill had been fully se- 
cured. Congress, with the reluctant approval 
of the President, bought the acquiescence of 
South Carolina, and then the daring little State 
was told that she would have been crushed had 
she persisted in her mad course. A dread — 
honorable and patriotic indeed, but on the part 
of the Federal government much to be regretted 
— of the consequences had forced both parties 
from their original standpoint. The principle 
was purposely left undecided, and, as to the 
immediate practical questions, a compromise 
was effected ; but if either party had a right to 
claim the victory, it was certainly not Jackson 
and the majority of Congress, but Calhoun and 
South Carolina. 

Another, and perhaps the best, proof that ap- 
prehensions for his personal safety, on account 
of Jackson's reported threats, had nothing to do 
with the course pursued by Calhoun, is the calm- 
ness with which he reviewed the field after the 
contest was over. There was not a single man 
in either camp who judged the results of it 
more correctly than he. Whenever a suitable 



106 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

opportunity was offered, he claimed, in a calm 
and dignified but very decided manner, that 
the overthrow of the protective system was due 
to the resistance offered by South Carolina, and 
that the conservative and beneficial character 
of nullification had been proved by experience. 
At the same time, however, he never failed to 
acknowledge that the doctrine of states-rights 
had suffered a defeat by the passage of the 
Force Bill. He even laid greater stress upon 
this fact, and exaggerated its significance. On 
April 9, 1834, he delivered a speech in support 
of a bill, which he had introduced, to repeal the 
obnoxious act, although by its own limitation 
the power conferred by it on the President was 
to expire at the termination of this session. 
Those who charged him with doing so only 
in order to appear consistent greatly deceived 
themselves. From the moment that he had as- 
sumed the leadership of the states-rights party 
the j^^incijiils ohsta was always present to his 
mind, and the unswerving rigor with which he 
applied it goes far to explain why he held such 
a unique position among the Southern statesmen 
in the slavery conflict. " The precedent, unless 
the act be expunged from the statute-book, will 
live forever, ready, on any pretext of future 
danger, to be quoted as an authority to confer 
on the chief magistrate similar or even more 



THE SEjS^ATE 107 

dangerous powers, if more dangerous can be de- 
vised." Therefore he declared it " subversive 
of our political institutions, and fatal to the lib- 
erty and happiness of the conntry," although, 
as to the immediate object for which it pur- 
ported to be passed, the compromise tariff had 
rendered it a piece of waste paper ere it had 
been inscribed on the statute-book. He was 
not lulled into the sleep of false security by the 
calm after the first blast of the storm. Al- 
ready in the so-called Edgefield letter of March 
27, 1833, declining an invitation to a public 
dinner, he had written, " The struggle to pre- 
serve the liberty and Constitution of the coun- 
try, and to arrest the corrupt and dangerous 
tendency of the government, so far from being 
over, is not more than fairly commenced. . . . 
Let us not deceive ourselves by supposing that 
the danger is past. We have but checked the 
disease. If one evil has been remedied, another 
has succeeded." 

As he declined all public demonstrations pro- 
posed to be given in acknowledgment of the 
stand he had taken against the Federal govern- 
ment, because he did not want to carry fuel to 
the fire of his calumniators, who attributed his 
course solely to impure personal motives, so also 
he abstained from currying the favor of his own 
party by shouting triumph and flattering them 



108 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

with pssans. To sound the tocsin was the un- 
grateful task of the rest of his life, and the 
greater the success of the slave power the harder 
he pulled the rope. In August, 1833, he wrote 
to the citizens of Newton County, who had ten- 
dered him a public dinner, — 

" I utter it under a painful but a solemn conviction 
of its truth that we are no longer a free people, — a 
people living under a Constitution, as the guardian of 
their rights ; but under the absolute rule of an un- 
checked majority, which has usurped the power to do 
as it pleases, and to enforce its pleasure at the point 
of the bayonet. . . . This condition we had been long 
approaching ; and to it we are " now absolutely re- 
duced by the proclamation and force act. ... So 
long, then, as the act of blood stains our statute-book, 
and the sovereignty of the States is practically denied 
by the government, so long will be the duration of 
our political bondage." 

This is the ceterum censeo, which recurs in all 
his speeches during the next years. In his first 
great speech after the nullification session, he 
declared, — 

" I stand wholly disconnected with the two great 
parties now contending for ascendency. My pohtical 
connections are with that small and denounced party 
which has voluntarily retii'ed from the party strifes 
of the day, with a view of saving, if possible, the lib- 
erty and the Constitution of the country in this great 
crisis of our affairs." 



THE SENATE 109 

He had not become a AVhig, nor had he ceased 
to be a Democrat, but he was one of the most 
uncompromising adversaries of Jacksonism. In 
all the leading questions of these years, so full 
of bitter strife, he stands in the front rank of 
the opposition, but he has no more in common 
with Clay and Webster than before. He and 
they fought side by side against a common 
enemy, but he did not fight with them for a 
common cause. In their defensive warfare 
against the removal of the government deposits 
from the United States Bank, these three 
occupied the same ground ; but when it came 
to the question of renewing the charter of the 
bank, or to the general problem of the currency, 
their ways separated, though they did not di- 
verge so much as one would suppose from Cal- 
houn's subsequent course. 

With regard to the bank, he sat as yet, so 
to say, on the fence. He did not conceal the 
lively distrust and grave apprehensions with 
which he viewed the close connection of the gov- 
ernment with a privileged moneyed corporation 
of such enormous means, but the reasons of 
expediency still prevailed over the objections 
which would have been decisive with him, if 
he had felt free to follow his inclination and 
general principles. He himself even reminded 
the Senate of the fact that the bank would 



110 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

probably not have been established, if it had 
not been for his exertions. His argumentation 
was as clear and logical as usual, and it led him 
to definite practical propositions ; and yet his 
speeches leave the impression upon the reader's 
mind that he himself did not know exactly 
what to think and what to will. Like the coun- 
try, he was in a state of transition with regai'd 
to this perplexing problem, and it is a curious 
fact that so early as 1834 he pointed out the 
ultimate solution of it ; but he did it in such a 
way that it would be absurd to claim for him 
the honor of the discovery. In his speech of 
January 13, on the removal of the deposits, he 
said, — 

" So long as the question is one between a Bank of 
the United States, incorporated by Congress, and that 
system of banks which has been created by the will 
of the Executive, it is an insult to the understanding 
to discourse on the pernicious tendency and unconsti- 
tutionality of the Bank of the United States. To 
bring up that question fairly and legitimately, you 
must go one step farther : you must divorce the gov- 
ernment and the banking system. You must refuse 
all connection with banks. You must neither receive 
nor pay away bank-notes ; you must go back to the 
old system of the strong-box, and of gold and silver. 
... I repeat, you must divorce the government en- 
tirely from the banking system ; or, if not, you are 



THE SENATE 111 

bound to incorporate a bank as the only safe and 
efficient means of giving stability and uniformity to 
the currency." 

Calhoun was not a " statesman " of the type 
which, at this time, began to become only too 
common in the United States. He did not owe 
his position to the grace of King Caucus and the 
favor of his grandees, the washed and unwashed 
patriots of the primary meetings. He therefore 
did not know and understand everything by 
intuition, as this privileged class of mortals do, 
but he was obliged to study and reflect upon the 
subjects with which he had to deal as a legis- 
lator. As a seat in the legislative hall was in 
his opinion as well the most responsible as the 
most honorable post in which a man can be put 
by the confidence of his fellow citizens, he ap- 
plied himself to this task with all the thorough- 
going earnestness of his nature. It is therefore 
a matter of course that his speeches never 
lacked a positive element of more or less, and 
not unfrequently of considerable, merit. Yet 
ever since the Southern Samson has put his 
head into the lap of the Delilah of state sover- 
eignty, his strength is on the wane whenever 
he returns to his old place among the builders 
of his country's greatness and happiness. Criti- 
cally to dissect the arguments of others and to 
expose the weak points of their devices, to de- 



112 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

nounce their inconsistencies and mercilessly to 
lash the moral shortcomings of their policy, 
and, above all, to point out the breakers ahead 
of the ship of state, — these are the things in 
which he excels. 

Jackson's adniinisti*ation offered a wide field 
for the vigorous application of all these peculiar 
qualities, and it was but human that Calhoun 
should avail himself the more willingly of the 
opportunity on account of his personal relations 
with the President. His speeches on the re- 
moval of the deposits and on Jackson's protest 
against the resolution of the Senate, denouncing 
it as an unwarrantable assumption of power, ex- 
posed the President's high-handed way of deal- 
in 2: with the Constitution and the laws, also the 
gross fallacies and inconsistencies of his reason- 
ing, in a truly masterly way, and were not less 
admirable defences of the constitutional rights 
and privileges of the legislative branch of the 
government. He did not spare the President, 
but neither his personal grievances nor the in- 
tensity of his political anger and disgust carried 
him beyond the line which respect for the office 
ought to draw whenever the chief magistrate of 
the republic is spoken of ; and his most vigorous 
thrusts were not aimed against the person, but 
against the system which had been inaugurated 
by Jackson. 



THE SENATE 113 

If the high-toned moral severity of the above- 
mentioned speeches was seasoned now and then 
with cutting- irony and haughty defiance, Cal- 
houn's remarks on the wholesale dismissal of 
Federal office-holders without cause betray pa- 
triotic sadness and deep anxiety for the future 
of his country. The subject was of too serious 
a nature to permit him to indulge in personal 
animosities or party bickerings. The removal 
of the deposits, the protest, the whole bank 
question, though all of great import, were after 
all but questions of the day, which would soon 
be dead issues, of no interest to anybody ex- 
cept the student of history. But would not the 
very life-blood of the body politic be poisoned 
if the government should fall into the hands of 
mercenaries, with whom politics constituted only 
a trade, to which they devoted themselves for 
the sake of the " spoils " of office ? Was not 
the love of country in danger of being drowned 
in the whirlpools of party strife, if the official 
spokesmen of the national parties should be 
men who owed their position to the dexterity 
with which they gathered followers around their 
standards by means of the spoils? Would not 
the politics of the republic degenerate more and 
more from a contest about great public measures, 
principles, and ideas, into a mean scuffle about 
the husks, if it should become an acknowledged 



114 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

principle that " to the victor belong the spoils " ? 
Would not every party be forced to follow suit 
if the example should be once successfully set, 
— for what party could hope to vanquish with 
untrained volunteers the skilled bands of lans. 
quenets fighting for booty ? Would not the 
management of the public affairs rapidly sink 
until it became a byword, if, instead of fitness 
for the office, the services rendered to the party, 
or rather to the chiefs of the party, should be- 
come the criterion for all the appointments, and 
if the Federal offices should come to be filled 
with those who had not succeeded in private 
life ; for would not the others at best consider 
the Federal offices but momentary make-shifts, if 
ability and faithfulness covdd no longer secure 
their tenure ? Last, but not least, would not the 
people begin to turn with disgust from politics 
when they saw the statesmen more and more 
ousted by mere bread-and-butter politicians? 
And what is the life of a democratic republic 
worth if the people accustom themselves to con- 
sider politics the monopoly of a set of men whom 
they do not respect ? 

In his speech on the removal of the deposits, 
Calhoun had said, with burning indignation : — 

" Can he [Secretary Taney] be ignorant that the 
whole power of the government has been perverted 
into a great political machine, with a view of cor- 



THE SENATE 115 

mpting and controlling the country ? Can he he 
ignorant that the avowed and open policy of the 
government is to reward political fiiends and punish 
political enemies ? . . . With money we will get par- 
tisans, with partisans votes, and with votes money, is 
the maxim of our public pilferers. . . . With money 
and corrupt partisans a great effort is now making to 
choke and stifle the voice of American liberty through 
all its constitutional and legal organs by pensioning 
the press ; by overawing the other departments ; and 
finally by setting up a new organ, composed of office- 
holders and partisans, under the name of a National 
Convention, which, counterfeiting the voice of the 
people, will, if not resisted, in their name dictate the 
succession." 

In a speech of February 13, 1835, he summed 
up the ultimate results of the spoils system in 
the following words : — 

" When it comes to be once understood that poli- 
tics are a game ; that those who are engaged in it but 
act a part ; that they make this or that profession not 
from honest conviction or an intent to fulfil them, but 
as the means of deluding the people, and through 
that delusion to acquire power, — when such profes- 
sions are to be entirely forgotten, the people will lose 
all confidence in public men ; all will be regarded as 
mere jugglers, — the honest and the patriotic as well 
as the cunning and the profligate ; and the people will 
become indifferent and passive to the grossest abuses 
of power on the ground that those whom they may 



116 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

elevate, under whatever pledges, instead of reforming 
will but imitate the example of those whom they 
have expelled." 

Does not this passage read like a cutting from 
an editorial of the last number of an " indejiend- 
ent " newsjDaper of the present day, advocating 
civil service reform ? But though he foresaw 
with astonishing perspicacity what this mis- 
chievous innovation must inevitably lead to, the 
root of the evil and the remedy for it he discov- 
ered no more than did any of his contempora- 
ries. The uniform practice of the preceding 
administrations concerning dismissal from offtce 
— even Jefferson's hardly forming an exception, 
although the loud complaints of the opposition 
had not been wholly unfounded — made him 
believe that nothing more was needed than to 
deprive the President of the power which, as 
he contended, had been conferred upon him 
under a mistaken construction of the Constitu- 
tion. He himself, as he openly avowed, had 
formerly held the opposite opinion, and the ar- 
gument with which he supported the assertion 
that the power of appointing did not imply that 
of dismissing was more ingenious than profound 
and sound. But whatever the true answer to 
the constitutional question be, the great mistake 
lay in the supposition that the evil could be 
cured by putting the power of dismissal from 



THE SENATE 117 

office under the direct control of Congress or the 
Senate. Experience has proved that Congress 
was more to be feared than the President ; for, 
in spite of the clear provision of the Constitu- 
tion, even the power of appointment has in the 
main virtually passed from the hands of the 
President into those of the members of Con- 
gress ; and the civil service reformers of our 
days usually consider this the worst feature of 
the actual system. Calhoun, like the whole 
Whig opposition, mistook a mere symptom for 
the cause of the disease. Because Jackson's 
administration assumed more and more the 
character of the reign of an autocrat, they ap- 
prehended that the encroachments of the Exec- 
utive upon the domain of the other departments 
of the government, and more especially the 
leo'islative, would continue to undermine the 
Constitution until the whole fabric of republi- 
can liberty should be in danger of toppling to 
the ground. The above-quoted denunciation of 
the National Convention, "composed of office- 
holders and partisans," which was to "dictate 
the succession," closed with the following words: 
" When the deed shall have been done, the 
revolution completed, and all the powers of our 
republic, in like manner, consolidated in the 
Executive and perpetuated by his dictation." 
Calhoun and the Whigs failed to see that, who- 



118 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

soever miglit become President, it could not 
possibly be an Andrew Jackson II. Jackson 
might be powerful enough virtually to nomi- 
nate his successor, but to appoint an heir was 
beyond his power. The presidential office waf) 
only the means of exercising this extraordinary 
povr'er ; but the source of it was the peculiar 
disposition of the majority of the people towards 
him, and this peculiar disposition was a thing 
which he could not bequeath to anybody. Van 
Buren knew this so well that in his letter accept- 
ing the nomination by the Baltimore Conven- 
tion he humbly declared, " As well from incli- 
nation as from duty, I shall, if honored with 
the choice of the American people, endeavor to 
tread generally in the footsteps of President 
Jackson." He was Jackson's choice, but the 
heirs of the general were the jjoliticians, and 
Van Buren would never have occupied the 
White House if he had not been one of the 
master minds of the politicians. If he had ever 
presumed to speak in Jackson's tone and to act 
in his autocratic spirit, the " Sage of Kinder- 
hook" would have been considered by his own 
party to be out of his senses. 

March 4, 1837, did not inaugurate a second 
"era of good feeling." The opposition re- 
mained loud and passionate, but the melodies 
of their war-songs were changed, or they were 



THE SENATE 119 

at least sung in another key. To pretend that 
Martin Van Buren would " name " his successor, 
and that there was still immediate danger of 
the liberties of the country being* crushed by 
the consolidation of all powers in the Executive, 
would have been simply ridiculous. The fears 
entertained on this head during the administra- 
tion of Jackson had certainly not been fictitious, 
though they had been generally very highly 
colored for the sake of effect. The best proof 
of their serious character was furnished by a 
movement for an amendment to the Constitu- 
tion, abolishing the veto power of the President. 
Calhoun, however, had not so far lost the sobri- 
ety of his judgment as to approve of this idea. 
He declared the veto " indispensable," becaus<, 
without it " the independence of the President," 
so far as concerned Congress, would be destroyed. 
He shared for the moment the erroneous views 
of the Whigs as to the future, but as to the 
past, i. c, the origin of the evil, he went farther 
back than they. The encroachments of the 
Executive upon the legislative and judicial 
department of the government were with him 
" the second stage of the revolution ; " but it 
had begun " many years ago, with the com- 
mencement of the restrictive system, and ter- 
minated its first stage with the passage of the 
Force Bill of the last session, which absorbed 



120 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

all the rights and sovereignty of the States, and 
consolidated them in this government." Thus 
his argument returned to its starting-point. 
The only way to secure "the preservation of 
our institutions " was to adopt the doctrine of 
state sovereignty with all its consequences ; and 
the last cause of all the evils complained of, by 
which the liberty of the country, and perhaps 
even the existence of the republic, were put in 
jeopardy, was the violation of this fundamental 
principle by the Federal government. 

From this time forward, every speech of Cal- 
houn which is not strictly confined to some spe- 
cial subject, contains a repetition of these two 
assertions in some form or othei*, and his incli- 
nation is constantly growing to make the range 
for his observations, on all subjects whatsoever, 
wide enough to permit some remarks on these 
topics, or at least a passing allusion to them. 
The wiseacres, who laughed all the warnings of 
the alarmists to scorn, began to consider him a 
kind of monomaniac on this head. Yet it was 
they whose minds wandered through the dales 
and o'er the hills of cloud-land, while his feet 
remained firmly planted on the rock of actuali- 
ties. Every day the slavery question became 
more exclusively the needle which determined 
the course of the politics of the country, and if 
safety for the interests of the slave-holders 



THE SENATE 121 

could be obtained at all in the Union, it was 
only through the doctrine of state sovereignty. 
No one understood so well as Calhoun that the 
appearance of the abolitionists had laid the axe 
to the root of slavery, though they were but a 
handful of men and women, with neither fame, 
social position, office, money, nor the general 
approbation of the public mind to make them 
formidable adversaries ; and therefore as yet no 
one fully understood how terribly in earnest 
he was and how correctly he read the future, 
when he declared at every opportunity that the 
minority, that is the South, was doomed, if state 
sovereignty was not recognized as the central 
pillar on which the dome of the Constitution 
rested. 

In January, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison 
had established in Boston " The Liberator," with 
the programme of " immediate and unconditional 
emancipation," and in December, 1833, the 
American Anti-Slavery Society had put forth 
its " declaration of principles," declaring against 
slavery a war which excluded the possibility 
of peace. The slave States were thrown into 
a wild excitement by the proceedings of the 
enthusiastic little band, and in the North the 
mob, very generally countenanced by public 
opinion and even by the authorities, had begun 
to hunt the agitators down as criminals who, 



122 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

like Western horse-tliieves, were of too danger- 
ous a character to be admitted within the pale 
of the law. Some time, however, was yet to 
elapse ere the question came directly before 
Congress. An occasional remark on " the fanat- 
ics and madmen of the North, who are waging 
war aoainst the domestic institutions of the 
South, under the plea of promoting the general 
welfare," is therefore about all we hear from 
Calhoun on this subject, during the first years. 
But when at last the discussion made its way 
into the halls of legislation he at once took part 
in it in a manner which proved that for a long 
time all his faculties had been concentrated 
upon the topic ; for he, and he alone, fully mas- 
tered ito 



CHAPTER VI 

SLAVERY 

In the Senate the floodgates of debate were 
opened by Calhoun's motion (January 7, 1836) 
not to receive two petitions for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of ColuniBia. The war 
of words, in which nearly one half of all the 
senators took part, lasted until March 11. Even 
by his Southern colleagues Calhoun was severely 
reproved for opening this box of Pandora. They 
accused him of going on a quixotic expedition 
in search of abstract political principles, because 
he himself declared that the abolitionists could 
not possibly " entertain the slightest hope that 
Congress would pass a law, at this time, to 
abolish slavery in this District, . . . and that 
seriously to attempt it would be fatal to their 
cause." Was it not a frivolous playing with 
fire and powder to force the discussion of this 
question upon Congress, since the material rights 
and interests of the South were absolutely se- 
cured by the perfect unanimity of Congress, 
most energetically backed, by public opinion 
in all the Northern States? Would not this 



124 JOHN C, CALHOUN 

uncalled-for debate do more to promote the 
cause of abolitionism than all the pamphlets 
and emissai'ies of the abolitionists had been 
able to do ? For whether his constitutional 
argument was sound or not, it was an incon- 
testable fact that his motion was considered by 
the North a wanton attack upon the right of 
petition. 

There was undoubtedly a good deal of truth 
in all these objections to the course pursued by 
Calhoun. Yet the charge was wholly unfounded 
that he was endeavoring intentionally to in- 
cense the North and the South against each 
other, in order to promote the purposes of his 
party. He spoke the simple truth when he 
asserted, in his speech of March 9, 1836, that, 
" however calumniated and slandered," he had 
" ever been devotedly attached " to the Union 
and the institutions of the country, and that he 
was " anxious to perpetuate them to the latest 
generation." He acted under the firm convic- 
tion of an imperious duty towards the South 
and towards the Union, and his assertion was 
but too well founded that these petitions for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia 
were blows on the wedge, which would ulti- 
mately break the Union asunder. 

That the attack of the abolition petitions was 
not du'eeted against slavery in the States, but 



SLAVERY 125 

merely against slavery in tlie District, was, 
though not from the legal point of view, yet as 
to the ultimate practical result, matter of ab- 
solute indifference. If, as all the petitions as- 
serted, the nature of slavery made its existence 
in the District a national disgrace and a national 
sin, the same disgrace and the same sin weighed 
down every Southern State. Calhoun's asser- 
tion, therefore, could not be refuted, that " the 
petitions were in themselves a foul slander on 
nearly one half of the States of the Union." If 
the national legislature now, in any way, offered 
its assistance to brand the peculiar institution 
of one half of the constituent members of the 
Union, it certainly violated the spirit of the Con- 
stitution ; for the Constitution, as everybody ad- 
mitted, not only tacitly recognized slavery as a 
fact which the States exclusively had power to 
deal with, but moreover served in many essen- 
tial respects as its direct supj^ort and protection. 
Calhoun was therefore unquestionably right 
when he said that, unless an undoubted provi- 
sion of the Constitution compelled them to re- 
ceive such petitions, it was their duty to reject 
them at the very threshold ; and he proved that 
there was no such absolute compulsion by an un- 
doubted constitutional provision. On the other 
hand, however, inasmuch as some obligations 
were imposed upon the whole Union with re- 



126 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

gard to slavery, the existence of slavery in some 
of the States was actually and legally also a con- 
cern of those States in which it did not exist. 
And in respect to whatever actually and legally 
concerned the people, they had a constitutional 
right to demand that their representatives should 
listen to their wishes and grievances presented 
in the form of petitions. Besides, no ingenuity 
could reason out of the Constitution the power of 
Congress over slavery in the District ; for some- 
where the power had to be lodged, and the 
legislative power of Congress over the District 
was expressly declared to be " exclusive in all 
cases whatsoever." To lay down the principle 
that Congress was in duty bound to shut its 
door against all anti-slavery petitions was there- 
fore most certainly an abridgment of the right 
of petition. The opponents of Calhoun were, 
in fact, no less right than he. Not their argu- 
ments, but the facts, and the Constitution, 
which had been framed according to the facts, 
were at fault. The founders of the republic 
had been under the necessity of admitting 
slavery into the Constitution, and the inevita- 
])le consequence was that conclusions which 
were diametrically opposed to each other could 
be logically deduced from it by starting the 
argument Jii^st from the fact that slavery 
was an acknowledged and protected institution, 



\ 



SLAVERY 127 

which, so far as the States were concerned, was 
out of the pale of the Federal jurisdiction ; and 
then from the no less incontestable fact that the 
determining principle of the Constitution was 
liberty, and that the spirit and the whole life 
of the American people fully accorded with the 
Constitution in this respect. 

The flaw in all the reasoning of Calhoun on 
the slavery question was, that he took no ac- 
count whatever of the latter fact. The logical 
consequence of this was that his constitutional 
theories were of a nature which rendered the 
acquiescence of the North in them an utter im- 
possibility. He never became fully conscious 
of this fact, which rendered all his exertions to 
obtain absolute safety for slavery in the Union 
as vain as the pouring of water into a cask with- 
out a bottom. His reasoning on the dangers 
which threatened slavery in the actual Union, 
under the actual Constitution, was, however, 
not in the least affected by it. From the first 
he saw them with such an appalling clearness 
that his predictions could not but seem halluci- 
nations of a diseased mind so long as the peo- 
ple, both at the North and at the South, had 
not been taught by bitter experience that the 
conflict was irrepressible, because a compromise 
between antagonistic principles is ah initio an 
impossibility. From the first he saw, predicted, 



128 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and proved that, unless his constitutional doc- 
trines were accepted, slavery could not be safe 
in the Union, and that therefore the slave States 
woidd have to cut the ties which bound them 
to the North. 

" Our true position [he declared in the above- 
mentioned speech], that which is indispensable to 
our defence here, is that Congress has no legitimate 
jurisdiction over the subject of slavery either here or 
elsewhere. The reception of this petition surrenders 
this commanding position ; yields the question of ju- 
risdiction, so important to the cause of abolition and 
so injurious to us ; compels us to sit in silence to wit- 
ness the assault on our character and institutions, or 
to engage in an endless contest in their defence. Such 
a contest is beyond mortal endurance. We must in 
the end be humbled, degraded, broken down, and 
worn out. 

" The senators from the slave-holding States, who, 
most unfortunately, have committed themselves to 
vote for receiving these incendiary petitions, tell us 
that whenever the attempt shall be made to abolish 
slavery they will join with us to repel it. . . . But I 
announce to them that they are now called on to re- 
deem their pledge. The oMempt is now being made. 
The work is going on daily and hourly. The war is 
waged not only in the most dangerous manner, but 
in the only manner that it can be waged. Do they 
expect that the abolitionists will resoi-t to arms, and 
conuuence a crusade to liberate our slaves by force ? 



SLAVERY 129 

Is this what they mean when they speak of the at- 
tempt to abolish slavery ? If so, let me teU our 
friends of the South who differ from us that the war 
which the abolitionists wage against us is of a very 
different character, and far more effective. It is a 
war of religious and political fanaticism, mingled, on 
the part of the leaders, with ambition and the love 
of notoriety, and waged not against our lives, but our 
character. The object is to humble and debase us 
in our own estimation, and that of the world in gen- 
eral ; to blast our reputation, while they overthrow 
our domestic institutions. This is the mode in which 
they are attempting abolition, with such ample means 
and untiring industry ; and now is the time for all 
who are ojjposed to them to meet the attack. How 
can it be successfully met ? This is the important 
question. There is but one way : we must meet the 
enemy on the frontier, — on the question of receiv- 
ing ; we must secure that important pass, — it is our 
Thermopylae. The power of resistance, by an uni- 
versal law of nature, is on the exterior. Break 
through the shell, penetrate the crust, and there is 
no resistance within. In the present contest, the 
question on receiAring constitutes our frontier. It is 
the first, the exterior question, that covers and pro- 
tects all others. Let it be penetrated by receiving 
this petition, and not a point of resistance can be 
found within, as far as this govei'nment is concerned. 
If we cannot maintain ourselves there, we cannot on 
any interior position. . . . There is no middle ground 
that is tenable." 



130 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Has not the history of the slavery conflict 
fully borne out every one of these assertions? 
Calhoun reads the future as if the book of fate 
were lying wide open before him. Only as to 
the means by which he proposed to avert the 
impending dangers he was as blind as all the 
rest of the people. If the enlistment of the 
moral and religious sentiment of the world 
against slavery was a war, in which the South 
must ultimately break down, what was the use 
of hermetically closing the Capitol at Washing- 
ton against all the manifestations of the spirit 
of abolitionism ? Since when did the civilized 
world or even the American people wait for 
the gracious permission of Congress, ere they 
dared to form their religious opinions or moral 
convictions? And if the religious, moral, and. 
political convictions of Congress and of the 
l^eople did. not agree, which of the two would 
finally have to yield, Congress or the people ? 
Even if it had been but a political question, 
the attempt would have been simply absurd 
to decree it out of existence by a resolution 
of the legislature not to listen to what the peo- 
ple had to say about it. But if it was also 
a moral and religious question — which most 
certainly it was — the attempt was doubly ab- 
surd. There is no " frontier " which can be 
successfully defended against ideas, and no 



SLAVERY 131 

" shell " is so hard that such ideas cannot pene- 
trate it. The confession that, if the shell were 
broken through, there was no resistance within, 
amounted therefore to a confession that slavery- 
would at last succumb, if the slave-holding 
States remained in the Union. 

From all sides Calhoun was accused of stir- 
ring up sectional animosity and strife in a most 
unwarrantable manner, by exciting the South 
with his wild talk about awful dangers, which 
had nowhere any existence except in his own 
feverish brain. The truth, however, was that 
he did not see spectres in broad daylight, but 
that he took too hopeful a view of the future. 
What in his opinion was but a dire eventuality, 
which could be easily averted, was, by his own 
showing, the inevitable end of the slavery con- 
flict. Abolitionism tolled the death-bell of sla- 
very i7i the Union, and dearly have the Amer- 
ican people had to pay for it, that they ever 
doubted Calhoun's declaration that, whenever 
the slave-holding States had to choose between 
the Union and slavery, they would not hesitate 
for a moment to decide in favor of slavery. 

" We love and cherish the Union ; we remember 
with the kindest feelings our common origin, with 
pride our common achievements, and fondly antici- 
pate the common greatness and glory that seem to 
await us : but origin, achievements, and anticipation 



132 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

of common greatness are to us as notling, com- 
pared with this question. It is to us a vital ques- 
tion. It involves not only our liberty, but, what is 
greater (if to freemen anything can be), existence 
itself. The relation which now exists between the 
two races in the slave-holding States has existed for 
two centuries. It has grown with our growth, and 
strengthened with our strength. It has entered into 
and modified all our institutions, civil and political. 
None other can be substituted. We will not, caVinot, 
permit it to be destroyed. . . . Come what will, 
should it cost every drop of blood and every cent of 
property, we must defend ourselves ; and if compelled, 
we would stand justified by all laws, human and di- 
vine ; ... we would act under an imperious neces- 
sity. There would be to us but one alternative, — to 
triumph or perish as a people. ... I ask neither sym- 
pathy nor compassion for the slave-holding States. 
We can take care of ourselves. It is not we, but the 
Union, which is in danger. . . . We cannot remain 
here in an endless struggle in defence of our char- 
acter, our property and institutions." 

Calhoun spoke to deaf ears. The petition 
was received, but the prayer of the petitioners 
was rejected by an overwhehning majority after 
a short and unimportant debate, in which the 
South was repeatedly and emphatically assured 
that thus a precedent was to be established for 
the rejection of all similar petitions, without 
any discussion, directly after their reception. 



SLAVERY 133 

James Buchanan was the father of the great 
device of thus, with an obliging- compliment to 
both sides, slipping through between the ham- 
mer and the anvil. It was a new trial of the old 
art of cloaking by empty formulas the contradic- 
tion of principles and the collision of facts. The 
petitioners did not see any material difference 
between a refusal to receive and a rejection on 
principle without any discussion ; and the prin- 
ciple, on the unconditional maintenance of which 
alone, in Calhoun's opinion, the safety of sla- 
very depended, was surrendered. Ill-will against 
the South had nothing whatever to do with 
that. Though slavery was not liked in the 
Northern States, they were as yet but too will- 
ing to satisfy the demands of the South. They 
shunned the agitation of the slavery question 
more than did the South, and they were most 
willing to suppress abolitionism. The trouble 
only was that there was no way of doing it. 
It is hardly to be supposed that the more in- 
telligent and educated Southerners can have 
deemed it j^ossible for the North to adopt the 
means which the Southern radicals proposed, 
with insulting imperiousness ; and yet there was 
a goodly number of Northern politicians who 
readily consented to decree even the impossible. 
President Jackson's message of December 2, 
1835, had invited Congress to pass a law pro- 



134 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

hibiting, " under severe penalties, the circular 
tion in the Southern States, through the mail, 
of incendiary publications intended to instigate 
slaves to insurrection." In point of fact, no 
such publication had ever been issued by any 
American press ; but what the President really 
wanted was, of course, clear enough : the mails 
should be closed to all publications tainted with 
the spirit of abolitionism. On Calhoun's mo- 
tion, this part of the message was referred to a 
special committee, which, on Februaiy 4, 1836, 
introduced a bill, accompanied by a reiDort. 
Calhoun, who was the author of the bill and of 
the report, defended them on April 12, 1836, 
in one of the most remarkable speeches ever 
delivered either by him or by anybody else in 
Congress. The recommendation of the Presi- 
dent was rejected, because a law " discrimi- 
nating, in reference to character, what publica- 
tions shall not be transmitted by the mail," 
would be an abridgment of the liberty of the 
press. Moreover, and above all, the principle 
upon which such a law would have rested de- 
livered the South, bound hand and foot, to the 
discretion of the Federal government. If Con- 
gress had the right to determine what publica- 
tions were incendiary and to forbid their trans- 
mission through the mail, it evidently had also 
the right to decide what publications were not 



SLAVERY 135 

incendiary and to enforce their transmission 
through the mail. Both objections were un- 
questionably well founded, and an unsophisti- 
cated mind would have naturally expected to 
see the conclusion drawn from them that the 
publications of the abolitionists could not be 
legally excluded from the mail. The bill, how- 
ever, prohibited " deputy-postmasters from re- 
ceiving and transmitting through the mail, to 
any State, Territory, or District, certain papers 
therein mentioned, the circulation of which is 
prohibited by the laws of said State, Terri- 
tory, or District." Calhoun, in fact, demanded 
at least as emphatically as Jackson the exclu- 
sion of abolition publications from the mail, and 
even the means by which he proposed to attain 
his end were virtually the same, though they 
appeared under a different nomenclature. The 
only real difference between the President and 
the senator was the constitutional doctrine on 
which they based their respective demands ; but 
that was indeed a difference of the last impor- 
tance. Jackson's idea was simply that, as sla- 
very was an institution recognized by the Con- 
stitution, the Federal government could not 
allow itself to be used for undermining it, but 
was obliged to protect it against attacks which 
were not only "unconstitutional," but "repug- 
nant to the principles of our national compact 



136 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

and to tlie dictates of liumanitv and relio-ion." 
Calhoun, on the other hand, took exactly the 
opposite view. According to him, the Federal 
government had no right to meddle in any way 
whatever with this question ; all it could do, 
and what at the same time was bound to do, was 
to enjoin upon its officers to conform themselves 
strictly to the laws of the State in which they 
happened to be employed. 

'• The internal peace and security of the States 
are under the protection of the States themselves, to 
the entire exclusion of all authority and control on 
the part of Congress. It belongs to them, and not 
to Congress, to determine what is or is not calculated 
to disturb their peace and security. ... In the 
execution of the measures which may be adopted by 
the States for this purpose [to prohibit the circulation 
of any publication or any intercourse calculated to 
disturb or destroy the relation between master and 
slave], the powers of Congress over the mail, and of 
regulating commerce with foreign nations and between 
the States, may require cooperation on the part of the 
general government ; and it is bound, in conformity 
with the principle established, to respect the laws of 
the State in their exercise, and so to modify its acts 
as not only not to violate those of the States, but, as 
far as practicable, to cooperate in their execution." 

Calhoun's bill, therefore, provided that post- 
masters who " knowingly " transmitted or de- 
livered any "paper" treating of slavery in a 



SLAVERY 137 

way contrary to the laws of the State should 
be punished by fine and imprisonment. Which 
clause of the Constitution conferred upon Con- 
gress the power to enact national laws for fur- 
therins: the execution of the state laws, this 
strictest of the strict constructionists forgot to 
tell. Like a noble steed on the race-course he 
did not look to the right nor to the left, his 
course leading in a straight line to the goal. If 
he had but once cast a passing glance on either 
side, he could hardly have helped being himself 
amused at the strange consequences of his the- 
ory, if nature had not denied him all sense of 
humor so far as politics were concerned. The 
laws of the States on the incriminated publica- 
tions might be as different as the glass splinters 
and the little pebbles in a kaleidoscope vary in 
shape and color. The Federal law, therefore, 
would enjoin upon the postmasters to obey and 
execute some dozen different and perhaps even 
contradictory laws relating to the same subject, 
.r— a law which would at all events have the 
merit of novelty in the history of legislation. 
A postmaster in Massachusetts imprisoned for 
omitting to do a certain thing, and a postmas- 
ter in South Carolina imprisoned for doing this 
very thing, both punished in pursuance of the 
same Federal law, — these two gentlemen, if no 
one else, would certainly not be convinced of 
the soundness of Calhoun's theory. 



138 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

The United States statutes were not disfig- 
ured by such a monstrous law. The blot is 
sufficiently ugly that it received in the Senate 
nineteen votes, four of which were cast by North- 
ern senators. Calhoun himself had probably not 
expected a more favorable result, for even of the 
four Southern members of the committee only 
Mangum, of North Carolina, besides himself, 
had given the report and the bill an unqualified 
approval. The whole speech of April 12, 1836, 
gives the impression that its real purpose was 
not so nmch to convince the Senate of the neces- 
sity or propriety of passing this particular bill 
as to get tlie argument before the country as a 
new manifesto, or rather prommc'iamento, of the 
slave power. At all events, it is only from this 
point of view that it is of great importance. 

Calhoun had taken a great step beyond the 
standpoint which he had occupied during the 
nullification controversy. Then he had said 
that the Federal government and the States 
were parties to a compact having no common 
judge, and therefore each was entitled to decide 
for itself as to the extent of its obligations 
under the compact, as to the violations of the 
same by the other party, and as to the means 
and the measure of the remedy. Only at this 
subsequent stage, and in evident contradiction 
of the alleged "party " relation, was the national 



SLAVERY 139 

government made to assume the position of an 
" agent " of the States. Now we liear nothing 
more of a compact; the Federal government 
stands no more on an equal footing with the 
States ; it appears only in the character of their 
agent, and a most humble, nay, a pitiful and 
despicable agent it is, for it is bound to do the 
bidding of every one of its constituent members, 
no matter how contradictory, how absurd, how 
outrageous their behests may be. Yet Calhoun 
has not changed his general constitutional theory 
concerning the relation between the Federal 
government and the States. It appears in a 
modified light only because he does not confine 
his reasoning to the constitutional question. 
The history of the slavery question has forced 
him boldly to step beyond it, and plant his foot 
on the higher and firmer ground of the unalter- 
able facts. He holds fast to the Constitution, 
for he shares the almost idolatroiis veneration of 
the whole people for it ; he knows how to find 
in it what he needs, and he is fully conscious that 
he would be a general without a single soldier 
in his army from the moment when his theories 
and his practical demands should avowedly 
come into conflict with its provisions. But the 
leading idea of his whole argument is the too 
well-founded conviction that, whether in con- 
formity with the Constitution or not, the issue 



140 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

would be decided according to tlie facts. Sla- 
very is, in his opinion, not only a fact, but an 
immutable fact, because it is the direct out- 
growth of the natural relation between the white 
and the black races. 

" To destroy the existing relations would be to de- 
stroy this prosperity [of the Southern States], and to 
place the two races in a state of conflict, which must 
end in the expulsion or extirpation of one or the 
other. No other can be substituted compatible with 
their peace or security. The difficulty is in the di- 
versity of tlie races. So strongly drawn is the line 
between the two in consequence, and so strengthened 
by the force of habit and education, that it is impossi- 
ble for them to exist together in the community, where 
their numbers are so nearly equal as in the slave-hold- 
ing States, under any other relation than that which 
now exists. Social and political equality between 
them is impossible. No power on earth can overcome 
the difficulty. The causes lie too deep in the princi- 
ples of our nature to be surmounted. But, without 
such equality, to change the present condition of the 
African race, were it possible, would be but to change 
the form of slavery," 

When the Republicans, many years later, 
made the political and social equality of the 
freedmen one of the principal planks of their 
party platform, they never, to the knowledge 
of the author, quoted this declaration of Cal- 



SLAVERY 141 

houn, though a higher authority than the fore- 
most representative of the slave-hoklers coukl, of 
course, not be ackluced for the necessity of such 
a radical change in the relation of the two races. 
This is the best proof that, although, or perhaps 
precisely because, Calhoun was the fanatical 
champion of the ideas of the Middle Ages with 
regard to slavery, he was so far in advance of 
his times with regard to the slavery question, 
that his prophetic warnings could not possibly 
be of any use to the country. They were always 
attentively listened to, here with patriotic anger, 
there with scorn and disdain, and by some with 
an involuntary shudder; but nobody really 
brought them home to his understanding, and 
therefore they were too soon forgotten, to be 
transmitted as a portentous bequest to the gen- 
eration which was to work out their fulfilment 
in wading through an ocean of blood. Many 
suspected him of treason, while he performed 
only with a sorrowing heart the office of a Cas- 
sandra ; they accused him of planning the de- 
struction of the Union, while he heaped one ir- 
refutable argument upon another, proving the 
impossibility of the maintenance of slavery in 
the Union ; and when the very " dough-faces " 
began to see that their clamoring for peace was 
as the whistling of a boy against the storm, they 
charged him with being the principal author of 



142 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tlie catastrophe, because he had foretold it. 
His claim to a place among the first men who 
have acted a part on the political stage of the 
United States has never been contested, and yet 
he has been handed down to posterity a mere 
distorted shadow of the real man, because his 
incessant cries of " Beware ! " and " Woe to 
you ! " remained fresh in the memory of the 
people, while the reasoning of which these warn- 
ings had been but the last conclusion was for- 
gotten or misconstrued. Yet in spite of all this, 
he and those to whom his memory has been 
dear have had no right to complain, because, 
though he was no traitor, but honestly and ear- 
nestly wished to see the Union preserved, still 
the Union and all that made it valuable and 
dear to him were " as iiothing " to him compared 
with slavery. 

This being the case in the fullest sense of the 
term, and slavery being an immutable fact, the 
word " compromise " is not to be found in his 
political vocabulary with regard to the slavery 
question. In a second speech on abolition peti- 
tions (February 6, 1837), he declares, " I hold 
concession or compromise to be fatal. If we 
concede an inch, concession would follow conces- 
sion, compromise would follow compromise, until 
our ranks would be so broken that effectual 
resistance would be impossible." So as every 



SLAVERY 143 

agitation of the slavery question in a hostile 
spirit eo ipso touches the vitals of the " peculiar 
institution," it must be suppressed, if tlie Union 
is to be preserved. In the discussion of the 
abolition petitions, his love of the Union had be- 
trayed this slave of his own implacable logic 
into the gross mistake of regarding the exclu- 
sion of the slavery question from the halls 
of Congress as substantially identical with a 
total and permanent extinction of its agitation 
everywhere and in every form. He clung to 
this fallacy, because to renounce it was to ac- 
knowledge that, if the rest of his argumentation 
was correct, his attempts to save slavery and 
the Union were ah initio absolutely idle. Now, 
however, he did not recur to this point, but 
drew directly from his premises the conclusion 
that the Federal government was bound to ef- 
fect the suppression of the agitation without 
meddling in any way whatever with the " pe- 
culiar institution ; " that is, that within the 
sphere of its legitimate action, and to the full- 
est extent of its constitutional powers, it was 
bound to do what the States demanded. No 
justification for refusing to do so did or ever 
could exist. Even the exercise of an unques- 
tioned constitutional power was no valid excuse. 
The discretion of Congress had its limit in the 
notion of every single State as to what its indi- 



144 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

viclual security demanded. A constitutional 
Federal law would instantly lose its validity and 
constitutionality, if a State should see fit, under 
the plea of securing its peace, to pass a conflict- 
ing law : — 

" The low must yield to the high ; the convenient 
to the necessary ; mere accommodation to safety and 
security. This is the universal principle which gov- 
erns in all analogous cases, both in our social and po- 
litical relations. Whenever the means of enjoying or 
securing rights come into conflict, — rights themselves 
never can, — this universal and fundamental principle 
is the one which, by consent of mankind, governs in 
all such cases. Apply it to the case under considera- 
tion, and need I as.k which ought to yield ? Will 
any rational being say that the laws of eleven States 
of the Union which are necessary to their peace, se- 
curity, and very existence ought to yield to the laws 
of the general government- regulating the post-office, 
which at the best is a mere accommodation and con- 
venience, — and this when the government was formed 
by the States, mainly with a view to secure more per- 
fectly their peace and safety ? But one answer can 
be given. All must feel that it would be improper 
for the laws of the States, in such case, to yield to 
those of the general government, and of course that 
the latter ought to yield to the former. Wlien I say 
might, I do not mean on the principle of concession. 
I take higher ground : I mean under the obligation of 
the Constitution itself." 



SLAVERY 145 

This obligation he found in the clause which 
empowers Congress "to make all laws which 
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into 
execution " the powers vested by the Constitu- 
tion in the government of the United States, 
whence he drew the seemingly so simple and 
unanswerable conclusion that no law, relating 
to a mere accommodation and convenience, could 
be proper, if it endangered the peace, security, 
and very existence of any one of the States. 
Each State being the exclusive judge of what its 
peace and security demanded, the direct conse- 
quence was that each State had to decide upon 
the necessity and propriety of the Federal laws. 
Thus the final result of Calhoun's reasoning: is 
again a systematization of anarchy, but it is an 
anarchy of a higher order than that which he had 
arrived at in the tariff controversy. Then he 
had claimed for each State the right to nullify, 
so far as itself was concerned, a Federal law 
which it deemed unconstitutional, and now he 
attributed to each State the right to invalidate 
a constitutional Federal law, and to render it 
unconstitutional by passing a conflicting law. 
Whether the law was to be invalidated only as 
to the particular State, or for the whole Union, 
we are not told. According to the theory, it 
ought to have been the former ; but then the 
old difficulty arose, that there was a Federal law 



146 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

which was a law but for a jjart of the Union, 
while, if it was invalidated for the whole Union, 
twenty-three sovereign States, which took no 
exception to what their senators and rej^resen- 
tatives in Congress had seen fit to do, had to 
submit to the will of one sovereign State. 

We are not informed which horn of the di- 
lemma Calhoun jDreferred ; but in either case 
the absurdity was so glaring that he again could 
not have failed to see it, if, in the particular 
matter on which he reasoned, there had not 
been a solidarity of interests of all the slave- 
holding States. This is the more evident as, 
throughout the report and the speech, each State 
and the slave-holding States are interchangeably 
used as equivalent terms with regard to the 
question in hand. The constitutional question 
is argued in such a manner that the right and 
the power claimed belong to each State individ- 
ually ; and whenever he came to speak of the 
facts, that is to say, whenever he a^^plied the 
theory to the legislative problem before the 
Senate, he said the South, the eleven slave-hold- 
ing States, etc. In the report, too, as well as in 
the speech, the consideration of the fact pre- 
dominates in a very remarkable degree over the 
constitutional argument : — 

" He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive 
that the subversion of a relation which must be fol- 



SLAVERY 147 

lowed with such disastrous consequences can only be 
effected by convulsions that would devastate the coun- 
try, burst asunder the bonds of the Union, and engulf, 
in a sea of blood, the institutions of the country. It 
is madness to suppose that the slave-holding States 
would quietly submit to be sacrificed. Every consid- 
eration — interest, duty, and humanity, the love of 
country, the sense of wrong, hatred of oppressors, and 
treacherous and faithless confederates, and, finally, 
despair — would impel them to the most daring and 
desperate resistance in defence of property, family, 
country, liberty, and existence." 

Yes, it is madness to suppose that the slave- 
holding States would quietly submit to be sac- 
rificed, — that is the pivot on which the report, 
the speech, and the bill turn, and not on any 
clause of the Constitution. If " existence " was 
at stake and " despair " sat at the council-table, 
then, indeed, it was a matter of course that not 
only the Union, but also the whole Constitution, 
was "as nothing." Therefore, also, the speech 
did not conclude with a maxim or rule of con- 
stitutional law, but with the announcement of a 
fact : — 

" I must tell the Senate, be your decision what it 
may, the South will never abandon the principles of 
this bill. If you refuse cooperation with our laws 
and conflict should ensue between yours and ours, the 
Southern States will never yield to the superiority of 



148 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

yours. . . . Let it be fixed, let it be riveted, in every 
Southern mind that the hiws of the slave-holding 
States for the protection of their domestic institutions 
are paramount to the laws of the general government 
in regulations of commerce and the mail ; that the 
latter must yield to the former in the event of con- 
flict." 

In the opinion of those who neither saw nor 
thought beyond the immediate future, this an- 
nouncement proved to be less than an empty 
threat. Not only was Calhoun's bill rejected, 
but in the same year another bill was passed 
by both Houses of Congress, and ajDproved by 
the President, prohibiting postmasters, under 
severe penalty, from " unlawfully " detaining* in 
their offices " any letter, package, pamphlet, or 
newspaper with intent to px-event the arrival 
and delivery of the same." Nowhere was the 
nullification of this law spoken of, and never 
again was an attempt made by Federal legisla- 
tion thus indirectly to abridge the liberty of the 
press. Yet Calhoun was right in the most es- 
sential point. The South never did abandon 
the principle of this bill ; that is to say, the 
principle that slavery had to be j^rotected and 
defended at all hazards, — with and under the 
Constitution, if possible, but protected and de- 
fended it must and should be, under all circum^ 
stances and by any necessary means. Calhoun 



SLAVERY 149 

knew that well enough, and he therefore did 
not wear the dismayed mien of a defeated man. 
With tlie same tone of deep, immutable con- 
viction he repeated at every opportunity the 
declaration that the South would never yield 
in the slavery question, because it could not do 
it. He did not live to see the day when this 
declaration was put to its final test ; but the de- 
lay was so long only because, through all these 
gloomy years, the resistance of the North in- 
variably broke down before the attacks of the 
solid phalanx of the slave power. Calhoun had 
been defeated in the question of the abolition 
petitions and in that of the incendiary publica- 
tions, because the South had not come up to the 
mark ; but the inglorious victories of the North 
augured nothing but ignominious defeats for 
the future, while Calhoun covild anticipate bril- 
liant — but alas, how terribly disastrous — vic- 
tories, for he was sure that the South would 
steadily advance towards the mark which he had 
drawn for it. Therefore it would have been a 
most egregious mistake to judge the situation by 
the immediate result of his movement in those 
two questions. The defeated " doctrinaire " 
was not " shelved ; " on the contrary, his influence 
was on the increase, though he dared once more 
to throw the gauntlet into the face of public 
opinion. 



150 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Nearly a year passed ere Calhoun addressed 
the Senate again on the slavery question. The 
old economical questions pushed themselves 
once more into the foreground. In spite of the 
compromise tariff, the revenues of the govern- 
ment increased at such a rate that the appre- 
hension arose anew of seeing a vast surplus 
accumulate. The various propositions for avert- 
ing that " calamity " or employing the super- 
fluous money do not concern us here. It need 
only be mentioned that Calhoun considered it 
a serious danger, and as, in his opinion, the ac- 
cumulation of the surplus could not be pre- 
vented, he earnestly advocated that it should 
be " deposited " in the treasuries of the States, 
according to their Federal representation. 

It is a very curious and even important fact, 
which, so far as our knowledge goes, has thus 
far been entirely overlooked, that Calhoun, be- 
sides his general reasons, had a special purpose 
in proposing such a disposal of the surplus re- 
venue. In a letter to some citizens of Athens, 
Georgia (August 5, 1836), he writes : — 

" Instead of being cut off from the vast commerce 
of the West, as had been supposed, we find, to our 
surprise, that It is in our powei-, with proper exertions, 
to turn its copious stream to our own ports. Just at 
this impoi'tant moment, when this new and brilliant 
prospect is unfolding to our view, the Deposit Bill is 



SLAVERY 151 

about to place under the control of the States inter- 
ested ample means of accomplishing, on the most 
extended and durable scale, a system of railroad com- 
munication that, if effected, must change the social, 
political, and commercial relations of the whole coun- 
try vastly to our benefit, but without injuring other 
sections." 

The Federal government dares not do indi- 
rectly what it has no right to do directly — how 
often had lie declared this to be a fundamental 
principle of constitutional law ! And yet what 
was this proposed distribution if not " internal 
improvements " by indirection ? True enough, 
not internal improvements which Congress 
deemed of national importance, but under the 
exclusive control of the separate- States, and in- 
tended, in the first place, to serve state interests. 
But it is not because the consistency of Calhoun 
might be called into question that this idea 
deserves more attention than it has hitherto 
received from historians. The arch-doctrinaire 
was one of the first in the South to see that 
with the railroads a force had been introduced 
which was to exert a most powerful influence in 
shaping tlie destinies of the country, not only in 
general, but also with regard to the relation of 
the two geographical sections lying respectively 
north and south of Mason and Dixon's line. 
He himself proposed a certain route thi'ough 



152 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the Alleghanies, spending eiglit days on his 
exploring expedition, and walking over a con- 
siderable part of the ground. The interest 
which he manifested in this problem was so 
great that the Southern papers spoke of him as 
the fittest man to be made the president of the 
great Southern and Western Railroad Company. 
He was fully awake to the importance of the 
fact that the difference in the wealth of the two 
sections increased every year in favor of the 
North ; and he saw that, as the general econom- 
ical development would go on at an unparalleled 
rate in consequence of communication by steam, 
this difference would necessarily increase at the 
same ratio if the South should lag behind the 
North in realizing the possibilities created by 
the new invention. Yet his last conclusion 
could not have been more wrong, if every one 
of his premises had been erroneous. Not Con- 
gress and its tariff laws, as he supposed, but 
slavery was the cause of the remarkable phe- 
nomenon which justly rendered him so uneasy ; 
and thei-efore the new invention, which was a 
blessing to all mankind, was sure to prove a 
curse to the slave-holders. As early as 1817 
a representative of Louisiana had declared in 
Congress, " We need no roads ; " and a country 
which needs no roads cannot have railroads. 
The will of the South was as nothing in this 



SLAVERY 153 

question. The pi-incipal cities might indeed be 
connected by rail, and it was done in the course 
of time ; but there were, so to speak, no brooks 
and rivers to feed the main streams, and, what- 
ever the South might do, it coukl not create 
them. The idea of Calhoun, to make up for 
lost time and overtake the North by means of 
railroads, was a more preposterous delusion than 
any he had indulged in heretofore. No power 
on earth could spur the South into a livelier 
pace, because it is the very nature of the " pe- 
culiar institution " to move in a jog trot. The 
railroads only served to put this fact into a more 
glaring light ; while in the North they acceler- 
ated the economical development more than the 
wildest imagination could have anticipated at 
that time. 

It was neither all nor the worst that Cal- 
houn's hopes were to be wholly disappointed, 
and that a new impetus was to be given in the 
direction in which the economical development 
of the country had been moving ever since the 
adoption of the Constitution. He was undoubt- 
edly right in doing his best for an extensive 
railroad system, for the less the South kept up 
in this respect with the North the more unfa- 
vorably would it compare in every respect with 
the non-slave-holding States. But every spike 
which fastened a rail in Southern soil was a 



154 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

nail driven into the coffin of slavery ; for every 
engine, nay, every traveller and every bale of 
goods, came impregnated witli the spirit of the 
times, which would not and could not brook 
slavery. The South had no choice ; Calhoun 
was right in believing that self-preservation 
bade the South to grasp even more eagerly than 
the North at the cup which was to mankind 
what the alchemists had vainly tried to find 
for the individual, — an elixir of life ; but sla- 
very turned it into poison. The irrepressible 
conflict between North and South was to end 
with the disruption of the Union ; but another 
and more intense irrejiressible conflict gnawed 
the intestines of the South, and it was this 
that rendered the doom of slavery inevitable. 
Whatever the merits or demerits of the deposit 
scheme were from a general point of view, if 
the Southern States should invest their share in 
railroads, it would certainly have been the best 
use they could make of the money, and yet it 
would have been better for them to throw all 
the surplus into the sea. 

The adoption of Calhoun's device led to one 
of the most curious episodes in the financial 
historv of the United States, which abounds 
with strange incidents. But whatever may be 
thought of the remedy, it will not be denied that 
Calhoun was right in asserting that the govern- 



SLAVERY 155 

ment oiiglit not to take more out of the pockets 
of tlie citizens than it really needed for its 
legitimate purposes, and that a chronically ple- 
thoric treasury might have grave consequences. 
Calhoun chiefly apprehended that such a con- 
stantly overflowing purse would be a powerful 
means to corrupt the whole government machin- 
ery still more than heretofore, by leading to a 
further increase of the vast patronage of the 
Federal government, and by enlisting all the 
Federal officers still more exclusively in the 
party service, and that the independence and 
sovereignty of the States would thereby be still 
more endangered. 

It had evidently become with him a matter 
of course that every legislative problem of a 
general character must, in some way or other, 
stand in close connection with these two ques- 
tions. The alarming increase of the revenues 
was partly due to the enormous sales of the 
public lands, which were, to a great extent, 
bought on speculation. Here was certainly a 
problem of the first magnitude and beset with 
extraordinary difficulties ; but it is, to say the 
least, rather surprising to see the greatest stress 
laid on the dangers which were to arise in those 
two respects from this source. This is not the 
place to discuss the great land question, and 
we will therefore not inquire into the merits or 



156 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

demerits of Calhoun's general opinions concern- 
ing it. The reason for his proposition (Febru- 
ary, 1837) to cede the public lands to the new 
States, namely, "to place the senators and re- 
presentatives from the new States on an equality 
with those from the old, by withdrawing our 
local control, and breaking the vassalage under 
which they are now placed," would, however, 
hardly admit of a serious criticism. 

A less far-fetched opportunity was offered 
him to discuss state sovereignty, from a new 
point of view and in a thorough manner, in the 
debate on the question of admitting Michigan 
as a State. Congress had made the admission 
dependent upon the condition that Michigan 
should agree to a certain boundary line. This 
agreement had been made, but opinions differed 
as to whether it had been made in a legal or 
illegal manner. As to the concrete question, it 
suffices to say that Calhoun was of the latter 
opinion. "We have to look somewhat more 
closely only at the general theory, which he 
proclaimed on this occasion. 

Calhoun asserted that the condition concern- 
ing the boundary attached " simply to her ad- 
mission into the Union," and did not affect in 
the least either the acceptance of her constitu- 
tion by Congress or " the declaration that she 
is a State." There was no difference of opinion 



SLAVERY 157 

as to the first part of the assertion, but it was 
coutendecl on the other side that Michigan was 
not and could not be a State before her admis- 
sion into the Union, Calhoun proved that this 
assertion was incompatible with the act of Con- 
gress imposing the boundary condition. That, 
however, could not be decisive as to the main 
question. Contests upon great constitutional 
principles cannot be decided by aj^pealing to 
the wording of a statute, because this might be 
grossly inaccurate and careless ; besides, the 
Constitution would then be but a piece of wax 
in the hands of Congress, for Congress might at 
first pass a law to suit itself, and then declare 
the correct reading of the Constitution to be 
thus and thus, since this law says so and so. 
But Calhoun did not rest his case solely upon 
this act of Congress. He said : — 

" I now go farther, and assert that it [the position 
of the friends of the bill before the Senate] is in di- 
rect opposition to plain and unquestionable matter of 
fact. There is no fact more certain than that Mich- 
igan is a State. She is in full exercise of sovereicrn 
authority, with a legislature and a chief magistrate. 
She passes laws ; she executes them ; she regulates 
titles, and even takes away life, — all on her own 
authority. Ours has entirely ceased over her; and 
yet there are those who can deny, with all these facts 
before them, that she is a State. They might as well 
deny the existence of this hall ! " 



158 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

If Callioun had been able under any circum- 
stances to consider a question of this nature with 
a judicial mind, instead of entering upon its 
examination with the foregone conclusions of a 
passionate partisan, he would have perceived at 
the first glance that the case was far from be- 
ing so plain as he made it out. Michigan was 
unquestionably no longer a Territory, and she 
did — and she did of right — all that he had 
mentioned. The most apjH'opriate — or it is 
perhaps more correct to say the least inappro- 
priate — name to be found in the insufficient no- 
menclature of political science for the common- 
wealth, therefore, was possibly a " State." That, 
however, was of very little consequence with 
regard to the point made by Calhoun. Every- 
thing depended upon the answer to the ques- 
tion what hind of a State it was, or, in other 
words, what the term " State " signified in this 
particular case. That Michigan was not at this 
moment a State in the most general acceptation 
of the term, even Calhoun would hardly have 
ventured to deny. Would he have dared to as- 
sert that, while the question of her admission 
into the Union was pending, she would have the 
riofht to declare war against some other sover- 
eign power, to conclude treaties, to coin money, 
to grant letters of marque and reprisal, etc.? 
Undeniably she lacked many of the most essen- 



SLAVERY 159 

tial powers inherent to sovereignty, and, in 
consequence, she evidently was not a State as 
that phrase is most frequently used. Just as 
evidently she was not a State of the Union 
in the sense of the Constitution, for the ques- 
tion under consideration was her admission into 
the Union. Yet no one pretended that she was 
out of the Union. AVhatever her legal rela- 
tion towards the Federal government might be, 
she certainly was a part of the great common- 
wealth known by the name of the United States 
of America. Calhoun could the less contest 
this fact, because another proof which he ad- 
duced for his assertion was that Michigan had 
elected senators, and, according to the Consti- 
tution, only States elect senators. This argu- 
ment clearly went too far the other way. In 
correct language, -Michigan had not elected 
senators of the United States, but she had 
elected two men, who were to be her senators 
in Congress after she had been admitted into 
the Union. Also, since Michigan was a part 
of the republic, the authority of Congress over 
her had incontestably not " entirely ceased," 
for there is and can be no part of the republic 
over which Congress has not some authority. 
Whether this authority went so far as to give 
Congress the right to remand Michigan into 
her former territorial status, if she refused to 



160 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

comply with the conditions imposed upon her 
admission into the Union, need not here be 
inquired into. Calhoun's argument is like a 
sword without a blade, if it be proved that Mich- 
igan was but a State in an inchoate condition, 
which could be perfected only by the act of 
Congress admitting her into the Union. 

Calhoun did, of course, not contest that an 
act of Congress was needed to make ISIichigan 
a State of the Union, but he did not assent any 
further to the proposition just stated. 

" I am told, if this be so, if a Territory must be- 
come a State before it can be admitted, it would fol- 
low that she might refuse to enter the Union after 
she had acquired the right of acting for herself. Cer- 
tainly she may. A State cannot be forced into the 
Union. She must come in by her own free assent, 
given in her highest sovereign capacity through a 
convention of the people of the State. Such is the 
constitutional provision ; and those who make the 
objection must overlook both the Constitution and the 
elementary principles of our government, of which 
the right of self-government is the first, — the right of 
every people to form their own government, and to 
determine their political condition." 

The right here claimed is not the right of se- 
cession. If secession, not as an eventually jus- 
tifiable revolutionary act, but as a constitutional 
right, is a monstrous political absurdity, this 



SLAVERY 161 

right thus asserted concerning Michigan is an 
absurdity in comparison with which the right 
of secession is the soimdest political conception, 
and even, like nullification, " a conservative 
principle." Calhoun now and afterwards main- 
tained that a so-called enabling act of Congress 
was required to give a Territory the right to 
erect itself into a State. But if any political 
proposition can be called self-evident, it is cer- 
tainly this : that an enabling act can only give 
permission to a Territory to erect itself into 
a State of the Union. Even if Congress coidd 
ever be so regardless of duty, and so mad as to 
give a Territory permission siiiiultaneously with 
adopting a state constitution to will itself out 
of the Union, in which clause of the Consti- 
tution did this strict constructionist find the 
power granted to Congress to commit such a 
suicidal act? The Constitution, which Calhoun 
proclaimed the grandest embodiment of political 
wisdom thus far seen by the world, would have 
been the greatest monstrosity ever conceived 
by the human mind, if the Union could con- 
stitutionally lose all its territorial possessions, 
merely because the inhabitants of the Territories 
were pleased to bow themselves out of it, by 
way of acknowledging the privilege accorded 
them to become full members of the Union. 
That " so long as these sound principles are ob- 



162 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

served" no State would evgr "reject tins high 
privilege," or would " ever refuse to enter this 
Union," but rather would " rush into your em- 
brace, so long as your institutions are worth 
preserving," was an assertion of no consequence 
whatever. The possibility stamps the theory 
as such an infinite absurdity that it would be 
an insult to the reader to discuss it at all, if 
John C. Calhoun had not been its advocate. 
But one month later he very correctly spoke 
of " the public domain " as being " the property 
of the whole peojile of the United States." So 
rtn insignificant minority — the inhabitants of 
the Tei'ritories — had the right to deprive the 
whole peoj)le of this inestimable property, and 
appropriate it exclusively to themselves, and, 
with the indirect sanction of Congress, given 
by the permission to adopt state constitutions, 
set up in business for themselves, without jier- 
haps even deigning to say good-by to this 
Union, which improved so wonderfully upon 
the example of King Lear. But enough, and 
more than enough, of this doctrine, which every 
schoolboy will pronounce to be utter nonsense. 
Yet one of the most acute political reasoners 
produced by America honestly believed it, be- 
cause it was a logical outgrowth of the doctrine 
of state sovereignty, and because the doctrine 
of state sovereignty was the sheet-anchor whici» 



SLAVERY 163 

held the worm-eaten bark of slavery to her 
moorings. 

Poor man ! Adams wrote some months later : 
" Calhoun looks like a man racked with furious 
passions and stung with disappointed ambition, 
as he is." Certainly, Calhoun had not forgot- 
ten his bitter disappointments, nor had he 
ceased to hope that he would, after all, some 
time reach the goal of his wishes ; but his per- 
sonal ambition had long ago become wholly 
subordinate to the passions which the slavery 
conflict had awakened in his bosom. The en- 
croachments of the slave power upon the do- 
main of liberty went on at an alarming rate ; 
but Calhoun derived no satisfaction from any 
success, because every advance disclosed to his 
mind more clearly the immensity of the space 
still to be traversed, ere the slave-holders could 
say to themselves : Put out the watch-fires, let 
us rest and enjoy the fruits of our toils, for 
there is nothing more to be apprehended. In 
his second speech on the admission of Michigan, 
he had thus very correctly characterized him- 
self : — 

" It has perhaps been too much my habit to look 
more to the future and less to the present than is 
wise ; but such is the constitution of my mind that 
when I see before me the indications of causes calcu- 
lated to effect important changes in our political 



164 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

condition, I am led irresistibly to trace them to their 
sources, and follow them out in their consequences." 
His name would appear in smaller letters in 
the history of the United States, but his happi- 
ness as a man would have been greater, if it 
had been otherwise. What wonder that passion 
raked its deep furrows into the face of a man 
who fouoht with all the fervor of his hot blood 
and all the energy of his iron will for a cause, 
and yet perceived that every victory gained in- 
creased the number and determination of its 
enemies, and rendered their ultimate triumph 
more probable, if not certain ! If he had still 
been open to arguments on this head, this con- 
dition of the struggle would have necessarily 
awakened doubts in his mind concerning the 
justice of his cause ; but as his stand had been 
irrevocably taken, the remarkable phenomenon 
had just the opposite effect. The denunciations 
of slavery by the abolitionists incited him to 
extol it in unmeasured terms. 

In a brief but most important speech (Feb- 
ruary 6, 1837) the question of receiving the 
abolition petitions was taken up by him once 
more. It was not done with a view to a recon- 
sideration of the memorable decision of the 
Senate, though he tried to prove that his opin- 
ion had been fully borne out by the course of 
events. He saw his prophecies about to be ful- 



SLAVERY 165 " 

filled, and his object was to warn the Senate 
once more to ari-est its fatal course down the in- 
clined plane, which terminated in an abyss. 

" I then said that the next step would be to refer 
the petition to a committee, and I already see indica- 
tions that such is now the intention. . . . We are 
now told that the most effectual mode of arresting the 
progress of abolition is to reason it down ; and with 
this view it is urged that the petitions ought to be 
referred to a committee. That is the very ground 
which was taken at the last session in the other 
House ; but instead of arresting its progress, it has 
since advanced more rapidly than ever. The most 
unquestionable right may be rendered doubtful if 
once admitted to be a subject of controversy, and that 
would be the case in the present instance." 

This was all very true, but Calhoun was 
mistaken in supposing that it could be helped. 
In this very speech, he himself furnished the 
best proof that nothing, which either the Sen- 
ate or any other earthly power could do, would 
alter any of these facts in the least. True 
enough, the attempt of the House of Repre- 
sentatives to reason abolitionism down had 
been worse than futile. The anti-slavery spirit 
could not be reasoned down ; and yet Calhoun's 
whole speech was nothing but an attempt to do 
this very thing, and to do it with arguments 
which unanswerably proved the truth of his 
first assertion, that it could not be done. 



166 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

" They who imagine that the spirit now abroad in 
the North will die away of itself, without a shock or 
convulsion, have formed a very inadequate concep- 
tion of its real character ; it will continue to rise and 
spread, unless prompt and efficient measures to stay 
its progress be adopted. Already it has taken pos- 
session of the pulpit, of the schools, and, to a con- 
siderable extent, of the press, — those great instru- 
ments by which the mind of the rising generation wiU 
be formed. 

" However sound the great body of the non-slave- 
holding States are at present, in the course of a few 
years they will be succeeded by those who will have 
been taught to hate the people and institutions of 
nearly one half of this Union with a hatred more 
deadly than one hostile nation ever entertained to- 
wards another. It is easy to see the end. By the 
necessary course of events, if left to themselves, we 
must become, finally, two peoples. It is impossible, 
under the deadly hatred which must spring up be- 
tween the two great sections, if the present causes 
are permitted to operate unchecked, that we should 
continue under the same political system. The con- 
flicting elements would burst the Union asunder, 
powerful as are the links which hold it together. 
Abolition and the Union cannot coexist. As the 
friend of the Union, I openly proclaim it, and the 
sooner it is known the better. Tlie former may 
now be controlled, but in a short time it will be 
beyond the power of man to arrest the course of 
events." 



SLAVERY 167 

What a bewilclerino' tanjjle of contradictions ! 
If the anti-slavery sj^irit, left unchecked, was 
sure to spread, and if it had already taken pos- 
session of the pulpit, of the schools, and of a 
considerable part of the press, — that is to say, 
of the three great formative agencies of public 
opinion, ^ who and what should then check it? 
Besides public opinion, there was no other power 
except the public authorities. In a democratic 
republic, however, the jjublic authorities are the 
creatures of public opinion, and not its masters. 
And what did Calhoun want the public author- 
ities to do? They were not to reason with the 
anti-slavery spirit, for to argue the case at all 
was to render the unquestionable right doubt- 
ful, and, as experience had taught, only served 
the cause which was to be put down. Was 
Congress to pass penal laws against the man- 
ifestation of the anti-slavery spirit in the pul- 
pits, in the schools, and in the press ? Would 
not the mere suggestion of such a law raise a 
storm of passionate debate, such as had never 
before swept through the halls of Congress? 
And if such laws could be passed in the face of 
the express provisions of the Constitution and 
against public opinion, how long could they re- 
main in the statute-book ? But if Congress 
should not reason with the anti-slavery spirit, 
and could not pass penal laws against it, what 



168 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

could it do but maintain an indisrnant silence ? 
Yet that would have been the policy of the 
ostrich. The danger does not disappear be- 
cause we shut our eyes against it. Nobody 
knew this better than Calhoun, and so he spoke 
in tones which would have chilled the blood in 
the veins of his audience if they had had the 
faintest idea in what an awful manner every 
word of his predictions would be fulfilled in 
due time. Therefore it was, by his own show- 
ing, a delusion, Avithout the smallest particle 
of firm ground to rest upon, that the anti-sla- 
very spirit could yet be controlled. It was the 
natural offspring of the moral convictions and 
the political sentiments of the times ; and, in 
consequence, every attemj)t to fetter it neces- 
sarily acted upon it as a spur. Calhoun could 
not have failed to understand that he had 
knocked the last vestige of his argument from 
under his feet, if it had not been so true that 
he spoke as a friend of the Union. Slavery 
had to be maintained though the skies should 
fall, yet that the days of the Union were num- 
bered he would not believe lyitil it was actually 
rent in twain. But abolition and this Union 
could not coexist ; therefore there had to be 
some means of crushing abolitionism, though he 
himself had been forced to demonstrate that 
there was and could be none. 



SLAVERY 169 

A man of so lucid a mind as Calhoun, and 
so incapable of consciously shutting his eyes to 
any truth because he did not like it, could not 
rest satisfied with being snugly spun into such 
a Gordian knot of contradictions. If it could 
not be unravelled, perhaps it might be cut by 
a bold stroke. The sword must, of course, be 
taken from the armory of reason. Did not the 
assertion that the anti-slavery spirit could not 
be reasoned down admit of a restrictive quali- 
fication? Denunciations, constitutional argu- 
ments, warnings, and threats were alike power- 
less. But could not the flood be stemmed, if 
the anti-slavery spirit were proved to be an 
egregious mistake and a gross blunder ? This 
it was that he now undertook to do. 

The Philadelphia Convention had nearly de- 
spaired of overcoming the difficulties thrown by 
slavery in the way of a " better Constitution," 
although the moral view taken of slavery by the 
North and the South differed at that time com- 
paratively little. The more exacting the South- 
ern States were with regard to slavery, the more 
readily did they admit that it was a moral, 
political, and economical evil. There was no 
hypocrisy in these declarations, though unques- 
tionably the intensity of conviction did not 
generally correspond with the emphasis of lan- 
guage. The confessions would have been much 



170 JOHX C. CALHOUN 

more guarded if it had been ajiprehended that 
they might lead to disadvantageous consequences. 
Why shouhl shivery not be called a mildew and 
a curse, since the North had no objection to hav- 
ing the whole responsibility for the existence 
of the evil thrown upon England, and since it 
was honestly believed that the prohibition of 
the foreign slave-trade would cause its gradual 
extinction ? Was it not rather to be supposed, 
that the resistance of the North against the 
demands of the South would be weakened by 
an appeal to the sympathy of Northerners with 
the unfortunate condition of their Southern 
brethren, and by strengthening the hope that 
the Southern States, promi)ted by their moral 
convictions and by what they considered their 
true interest, would make all possible exertions 
to render the constitutional compromises in fa-, 
vor of slavery only temporary make-shifts ? The 
more these hopes proved, to be vain delusions, 
the more it became the settled policy of the 
South to season its exactions with a strong 
dose of sound moral sentiments. The South 
had begun with honest self-deception, and it 
gradually sunk into conscious deception of oth- 
ers ; hollow declamations took the place of true 
and more or less deep sentiments. Now and 
then a voice was heard energetically disclaim- 
ing the least hostility against negro slavery 



SLAVERY 171 

from any point of view. These bold confes- 
sions were, however, hardly noticed amid the 
din of general protestations against " slavery in 
the abstract," and though they were ominous 
signs of the times, they were, in fact, of them- 
selves of no great importance, because they 
were after all but personal opinions. Only 
when placed on the basis of a general principle 
did they become a vital force, which pushed the 
slavery conflict into a new phase of develop- 
ment. Calhoun now took this decisive step, 
with full consciousness of its significance. He 
not only denied that slavery " in the abstract " 
was an evil, but he emphatically proclaimed 
negro slavery to be a good. 

" But let me not be understood as admitting, even 
by ixuplication, that the existing relations between 
the two races in the slave-holding States is an evil : 
far otherwise, I hold it to be a good, as it has thus 
far proved itself to be to both, and will continue to 
prove so if not disturbed by the fell spirit of abolition. 
. . . The relation now existing: in the slave-hoklin'r 
States between the two [races] is, instead of an evil, 
a good, — a positive good." 

The argument that the negroes were greatly 
benefited by slavery, because physically, intel- 
lectually, and morally their actual ccmdition was 
infinitely better than it would have been in 
the wilds of Afiica, was very old, and one still 



172 * JOHN C. CALHOUN 

meets with it occasionally. Was it not, then, 
cruel and unchristian to declare the African 
slave-trade piracy, and thereby deprive the poor 
benighted Africans of every chance of under- 
going this blissful change ? But, however that 
might be, why was it a blessing for native-born 
Americans of the negro race to be kept in sla- 
very, because it had been a blessing to their 
ancestors, two or more generations back, to be 
transported from Africa to America, though 
they were sold into slavery ? But we need not 
dwell upon the threadbare sophistry of the ar- 
gument, because Calhoun only repeated what 
had been said a thousand times before. 

Of much more importance was his "appeal 
to facts " to support the other assertion : That 
slavery was also " a positive good " for the other 
race. " In the mean time," he said, " the white 
or European race has not degenerated. It has 
kept pace with its brethren in other sections of 
the Union, where slavery does not exist. It is 
odious to make comparisons ; but I appeal to all 
sides whether the South is not equal in virtue, 
intelligence, patriotism, courage, disintei*ested- 
ness, and all the high qualities which adorn our 
nature." Inefficient and unreliable as were the 
statistics of the United States at that time, they 
were full and accurate enough to tell a strange 
story about how the South had kept pace with 



SLAVERY 173 

the North with regard to intelligence, so far as 
intelligence depends upon school instruction and 
upon the whole character of the life of the coni- 
munit}^ in which an individual happens to live. 
The history of the slavery conflict and of the 
questions which stood in close connection with 
it furnished an odd commentary on the pecu- 
liar disinterestedness of the South. Some parts 
of the local news and the advertising columns 
of the Southern papers concerning slaves were 
strange reading for one wanting to inform him- 
self about certain virtues and high qualities 
which adorn our nature. Yet Calhoun sj^oke 
in good faith, — only he had " the upper ten 
thousand " in mind, while he sjsoke of the white 
race. Every year it became more evident that 
the curse of slavery weighed upon the white 
race as heavily as upon the negroes, if not even 
more so. Only in one thing did Calhoun admit 
the inferiority of the South, — in " the arts of 
gain : " a most imjjortant thing, indeed, since 
the arts of gain are the most powerful agen- 
cies of civilization. But the South was not re- 
sponsible for this one weak point in its case, for 
he traced it " mainly to the fiscal action of this 
government." Adam was more successful in 
covering his nudity with a fig-leaf than the 
South in the attempt to account for its unsat- 
isfactory economical condition by this charge 



174 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

against tlie economical policy of the Federal 
government. Whether good or bad, that policy 
had been the saiBe for the whole country, and 
the North had advanced with giant strides, while 
the South, in spite of its natural advantages, its 
cotton monopoly and the unparalleled increase 
of the cotton culture, complained that " the fox 
dwelt amid the hearth-stones of once blooming 
plantations." There was no other essential dif- 
ference in the condition of the two sections than 
slavery and what had resulted from it, and to 
slavery, therefore, the inferiority in the arts of 
gain had ultimately to be traced. 

This "appeal to facts" more than sufficed 
to prove that heavy clouds, laden with storm 
and lightning, overhung the sky of the sunny 
South, if it adopted this doctrine of the positive 
good of slavery to both races. For then it had 
sealed with its own hands the decree of fate, 
that it had steadily to go on from bad to worse. 
But all this was as nothing compared with the 
general principle, upon which Calhoun rested 
his assertion : " I take higher ground. ... I 
hold, then, that there never has .yet existed a 
wealthy and civilized society in which one por- 
tion of the community did not, in point of fact, 
live on the labor of the other." Almost in- 
numerable have been the devices — " from the 
brute force and gross superstition of ancient 



SLAVERY 175 

times to the subtle and artful fiscal contriv- 
ances of modern " — by which so small a share 
of the wealth of all civilized communities has 
been allotted to those by whose labor it was 
produced, and so large a share given to the non- 
producing classes. 

" I might well challenge a comparison between 
them and the more direct, simple, and patriarchal 
mode by which the labor of the African race is, 
among us, commanded by the European. I may say 
with truth that in few countries so much is left to 
the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from 
him. . . . But I will not dwell on this aspect of the 
question ; I turn to the political, and here I fear- 
lessly assert that the existing relation between the 
two races in the South, against wliich these blind 
fanatics are waging war, forms the most solid and 
durable foundation on which to rear free and stable 
political institutions. It is useless to disguise the 
fact. There is and always has been, in an advanced 
stage of wealth and civilization, a conflict between 
labor and capital. The condition of society in the 
South exempts us from the disorders and dangers 
resulting from this conflict ; and explains why it 
is that the condition of the slave-holding States has 
been so much more stable and quiet than that of the 
North. The advantages of the former, in this re- 
spect, will become more and more manifest if left 
undisturbed by interference from without, as the 
country advances in wealth and numbers. We have, 



176 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

in fact, but just entered that condition of society 
vvhere the strength and durability of our political in- 
stitutions are to be tested ; and I venture nothing in 
predicting that the experience of the next generation 
will fully test how vastly more favorable our condi- 
tion of society is than that of other sections for free 
and stable institutions, provided we are not disturbed 
by the interference of others, or shall have sufficient 
intelligence and spirit to resist promptly and success- 
fully such interference." 

This was a manifesto of infinitely more im- 
port than all his writings and speeches on nnl- 
lification. His warfare against the anti-slavery 
spirit had been in the beginning strictly de- 
fensive. Because the broad shield of the Con- 
stitution completely covered the " peculiar in- 
stitution " of the South against all legislative 
interference by the Federal government, there- 
fore he had thought that it must also prove im- 
penetrable to the arrows of abolitionism ; and 
with the doctrine of state sovereignty he had 
built the citadel of nullification, which would in 
all emergencies furnish a last unconquerable re- 
fuge. Strong as this position was, he soon be- 
came convinced that it was not strong enough. 
Without abandoning it, he now warned the 
North that the permanent and absolute security 
of slavery was a question of life and death with 
the South, and that this plain fact would deter- 



SLAVERY 177 

mine its action, if the anti-slavery spirit was not 
promptly and forever crushed out. A constant 
warfare, calculated morally to ruin the slave- 
holding States in their own eyes and in the 
eyes of the civilized world, would not and could 
not be endured by them. Now he himself chal- 
lenged not only the abolitionists, but the whole 
North and the whole civilized world, to a deci- 
sive combat with those moral and intellectual 
arms from which, according to his own state- 
ment, the slave-holding States alone had any- 
thing to appi-ehend, — a most audacious but un- 
avoidable step. If a successful defence was at 
all possible, the attack had to be met with the 
same weapons with which it was made. As long 
as the South apologized for slavery as a dire ne- 
cessity, a vast majority of the Northern people 
would insist upon having the constitutional 
obligations scrupulously fulfilled by the Federal 
government. But they would do it less and less 
willingly, because the anti-slavery spirit, which 
was the spirit of the times, could not be checked 
by the Constitution ; for the Constitution was a 
rule of action, but not a law for the thoughts 
and sentiments of the people. If the hostile 
feeling against slavery was to be conquered, the 
jieople had to be convinced that it was mistaken 
and wrong. And as slavery could not be an in- 
different thing, if its maintenance was a ques- 



178 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tion of life and death with the South, it must ne- 
cessarily be a blessing. Thus the necessities of 
defence imperatively demanded the transforma- 
tion of slavery from a curse into a most enviable 
institution, for moral and political reasons. 

That there was some truth in Calhoun's as- 
sertions could not be gainsaid. The conflict 
between labor and capital constituted the sig- 
nificance of the times in the western world, 
and the slave-holding States knew nothing of it, 
because labor was owned by capital, and there- 
fore capital arranged the relation in every re- 
spect wholly to suit itself. So long as labor did 
not appeal to brute force, the South was, in con- 
sequence, exempt from the dangers and disor- 
ders which result from this conflict in communi- 
ties where labor, too, has its rights and is in a 
condition to defend its interests ; there it was 
navigation on a pond, here on a never motion- 
less and sometimes tempestuous sea ; but there 
the sun bred poisonous miasmas in the stagnant 
waters, and the navigator was in danger of suffo- 
cating in the mire if the boat capsized by some 
accident, while here were the dangers, but also 
the vigor and all the resources, of real, ever pro- 
gressing life. Had Calhoun so entirely forgotten 
all that he had seen during his college years in 
New England that this difference really escaped 
his keen eye ? Had he grown to be so impreg- 



SLAVERY 179 

nated with the spirit of slavery that the spirit of 
the people of the free States had become to him 
a book closed with seven seals? Could they ever 
be made to believe that slavery was " a positive 
good " ? And if this declaration would always 
have the sound of a blasjjhemy in their ears, 
what would he have gained for the security of 
slavery in the Union, even if his assertion were 
true ? The hatred of slavery in the North was 
as yet very far from being so deadly as he ex- 
pected it to become in a little while ; but still 
slavery was hated upon political, moral, and 
religious principles. Principles, however, are 
vital forces in the history of mankind, and what 
a man believes to be a principle works with him 
as such. Therefore, even if Calhoun were right, 
his declaration could only fan the flames of the 
conflict between South and North. It was the 
formal announcement that this conflict never 
could terminate in a peace, nor even be inter- 
rupted by an honest truce. 

All the free States were genuine democracies, 
and therefore the assertion that slavery is the 
most solid and durable foundation upon which 
to rear free institutions was in their eyes simply 
a contradictio in adjecto. Whether the institu- 
tions which the South reared on this base were 
good or bad, they were confessedly the products 
of a different civilization, — of a civilization dif- 



180 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

fering from that of the North not only in details, 
but in the formative principle. It is, however, 
self-evident that two civilizations, with antago- 
nistic formative principles, cannot permanently 
coexist in one political organism, because they 
move in opposite directions. Instead of recon- 
cilino- the North and the civilized world to the 
existence of slavery, Calhoun's new gospel of 
slavery was a declaration of aggressive war. 
But one step more could be taken in this direc- 
tion : the deeds could be made to conform to the 
theory, the conversion of the heathen to the new 
gospel could be undertaken ; the logical conse- 
quence of the doctrine of the " positive good " 
was the propagandisra of slavery. 

The time was not far off when the South, 
with Calhoun as its foremost leader, was to take 
this last step, which proved to be the beginning 
of the end. For a while, however, the attention 
of the country was diverted from the slavery 
conflict by financial and other economical ques- 
tions, which pressed themselves into the fore- 
ground in a most unpleasant manner. 

We have seen how many wise heads in the 
Capitol at Washington, and among them that 
of Calhoun, were troubled by the fear that the 
United States government stood in danger of 
something like the fate of King Midas. But 
instead of having to deal with an overflowing 



SLAVERY 181 

treasury, they had to . struggle with the disas- 
trous consequences of the crash of 1887, the 
worst economical crisis the country had as yet 
experienced since the war of independence. Cal- 
houn took a prominent but not a leading part 
in all the questions mediately and immediately 
connected with this catastrophe. To present 
the reader with an intelligent synopsis of his 
views would require a discourse on the general 
history of the times, which cannot be com- 
pressed within the small frame of this biogra- 
phy. It appears, however, the less necessary to 
enlarge upon them, because no new principles 
were involved in the discussion, and the stand 
taken by Calhoun did not mark a new epoch in 
his general career. From the personal point of 
view it is almost of more interest that, in Feb- 
ruary, 1837, he had a last direct encounter with 
General Jackson, who had taken him to task 
for some remarks supposed to have been made 
by Calhoun in a speech on the land question. 
As the hot-tempered President had based his 
grossly abusive letter on an inaccurate report, 
Calhoun had no difficulty in chastising him se- 
verely for this attempt " upon the privileges of 
a United States senator ; " this time, however, 
himself overstepping the limits which the offi- 
cial station of his adversary should have im- 
posed upon him. 



182 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Perhaps tliis incident influenced to some ex- 
tent his language in the speech which he deliv- 
ered a few days later on the relations of the 
United States to France ; but it would be ridic- 
ulous to suppose that personal hostility to Jack- 
son was the reason of his opposition to the 
policy of the President in the indemnity ques- 
tion. He proved beyond contradiction that the 
untoward turn which this affair had taken was 
mainly due to the false steps of the administra- 
tion, and he conclusively showed that in a war 
between the United States and France the 
former would have infinitely more to suffer, 
while neither could derive any advantage from 
it. The national pride was flattered to hear the 
victor of New Orleans blow the war trumpet 
so lustily and defiantly ; but the sober second 
thought of the people entirely agreed with Cal- 
houn, that it would be madness, on a mere ques- 
tion of " etiquette," to provoke a war with the 
oldest ally of the United States, who had ren- 
dered them such signal services in their hour of 
need. 



CHAPTER VII 

UNDER VAN BUREN 

Much time was to elapse ere justice was 
rendered Calhoun with regard to the course he 
saw fit to pursue upon the leading question of 
the day, — President Van Buren's sub-treasury 
scheme, which was to sever entirely and for- 
ever the connection between the government 
and banks of every description. It was but 
natural that the Whigs were deeply chagrined 
to see Calhoun part company with them in the 
moment when, as he himself freely admitted, 
the continuation of the alliance would have led 
to the overthrow of the administration party ; 
but they had no right to expect anything else 
from him. He was not guilty of any treachery, 
nor could he be justly charged with inconsist- 
ency, though in 1835, when the sub-treasury 
scheme was first introduced by General Gordon, 
he had declared it " premature," and in 1836, 
when tlie proposition was renewed by Benton, 
" impracticable at the time ; " nay, even though 
he had himself proposed the establishment of a 
United States Bank for twelve years " as a 



184: JOHN C. CALHOUN 

better and more practical plan to unbank tlie 
banks." It accorded strictly with the facts 
when he declared, " We joined our old oppo- 
nents on the tariff question, but under our own 
flag and without merging in their ranks." No- 
body had ever pretended that he had become a 
Whig ; he had concluded an alliance with the 
Whigs for the specific purpose of opposing the 
encroachments of the Executive upon the do- 
main of the other departments of government, 
and of counteracting all the dangerous tenden- 
cies of Jackson's unscrupulous autocratic rule. 
From Martin Van Buren, however, nothing was 
to be apprehended. " Executive usurpation 
had been arrested. The Treasury was empty, 
and the administration had scarcely a majority 
in either House or in the Union." The object 
of the alliance had been accomplished. The 
questions which were now the order of the day 
left the two great national parties intact, but 
Calhoun was free to join either side, because 
he belonged to neither. " He was master of 
his own move, and acknowledged connection 
with no party but the state-rights party, — the 
small band of nullifiers, — and acted either with 
or a<rainst the administration or the national 
party, just as it was calculated to further the 
principles and policy which we, of that party, 
regarded as essential to the liberty and insti- 



UNDER VAN BUREN 185 

tutions of the country." Viewing the general 
situation of the country in the manner he did, 
it was therefore a matter of course that he 
pitched his solitary tent for the present next 
the camp-fires of the administration party. 

" We have, Mr. President, arrived at a remarkable 
era in our political history. The days of legislative 
and executive encroachments, of tariffs and surjdiises, 
of bank and public debt and extravagant expenditure, 
are past for the present. The government stands in 
a position disentangled from the past, and freer to 
choose its future course than it has ever been since 
its commencement. We are about to take a fresh 
start. I move off under the states-rights banner, 
and go in the direction in which I have been so long 
moving. I seize the opportunity thoroughly to re- 
form the government ; to bring it back to its original 
principles ; to retrench and economize ; and rigidly 
to enforce accountability. I shall oppose strenu- 
ously all attempts to originate a new debt ; to create 
a national bank ; to reunite the political and money 
powers (more dangerous than church and state) in 
any form or shape ; to prevent the disturbances of the 
compromise, which is gradually removing the last 
vestige of the tariff system. And, mainly, I shall use 
my best efforts to give an ascendency to the great 
conservative principle of state sovereignty over the 
dangerous and despotic doctrine of consolidation." 

Had the Whigs, then, quite overlooked that, 
although he had fought with them against Jack- 



186 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

son, it was an utter impossibility that lie should 
ever exert himself for their ascendency ? That 
the man who declared that he " wished to be 
considered nothing more than a plain and an 
honest nullifier'' should "join the friends of 
the tariff, of a national bank, and the whole 
system of congressional usurpations, and utterly 
break down his old friends of 1827, who had 
taken shelter under his position, and thus give 
a complete and final victory to his old oppo- 
nents of that period, and with it a permanent 
ascendency to them and their principles and 
policy, which, he honestly believed, could not 
but end in consolidation, with the loss of our 
liberty and institutions," — this, indeed, was a 
most preposterous idea. Calhoun, however, was 
mistaken in one point, and that the most ma- 
terial. The victory of the administration could 
never turn to the advantage of the states-rights 
party. The independent Treasury gave the ad- 
ministration of the finances a really political 
character for the first time, and it therefore 
necessarily contributed to the growing together 
of the " sovereign " States into a national Union. 
Our sources do not inform us whether Cal- 
houn ever became aware of this fact. His first 
great movement to bring the government " back 
to its original principles " looks less like the hope- 
ful beginning of a thorough reform than like the 



UNDER VAN BUREN 187 

desperate effort of a man who is in danger of 
being swallowed up by the surging waves, to pile 
up dike upon dike till he has a wall so broad 
and high that he can laug-h the most furious 
storms to scorn. Vain exertions, for his dikes 
are not constructed of earth, stone, and mortar, 
but of mere assertions. The most strenuous 
efforts of the North to put down abolitionism by 
public opinion had been met by the South with 
the contemptuous remark that all the satisfac- 
tion the South got for its just complaints was 
"words, mere words;" and now the great 
leader of the slave power had nothing more 
substantial to throw into the way of the anti- 
slavery spirit than "• words, mere words." The 
last aim and end of the bringing back of the 
government to its original principles was the 
security of slavery ; and this was to be obtained 
not by legislation, but by resolving this and that 
with regard to the constitutional and political 
aspect of the slavery question. Did these long 
strings of resolutions, by being spread over the 
journal of the Senate, acquire any secret virtue 
which made them a wall of adamant, against 
which all the arms of the anti-slavery spirit 
would splinter like glass? Whom did they 
bind? Not even the Senate itself, and yet 
infinitely less the other departments of the 
government or even the people. They had no 



188 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

legal authority whatever, and though they might 
be of great moral weight with many persons, 
what effect was to be expected from the mere 
opinion of the temporary majority of the Senate, 
which might be changed at any moment, if all 
the bulwarks of the Constitution were no longer 
deemed in themselves sufficient protection for 
the peculiar institution ? Surely, the resolution 
mania, which from this time possessed Calhoun, 
is alone ample proof how justly he was charged 
with being a doctrinaire. 

But it was a great mistake to suppose that all 
the weeks which the haughty planter forced the 
Senate, at the expense of its legitimate legisla- 
tive business, to pass in debate on his constitu- 
tional opinions were spent to no purpose. It has 
been said before that, with regard to the slavery 
question, this doctrinaire was the only one who 
moved on at even pace with the events, and he 
knew now as well as ever what he was about. 
So far as he expected anything from his resolu- 
tions for the greater security of slavery he was 
not only disappointed, but he did in fact, as he 
was charged on all sides with doing, pour oil 
upon the flames. But the resolutions were not 
only designed to serve as additional guards for 
the " positive good " of the South ; they were 
besides a programme for the future, and as such 
they were a political event of the first magnitude. 



UNDER VAN BUREN 189 

The central idea of the resolutions o£ Decem- 
ber 27, 1837, was, of course, that the safety of 
the South depended entirely upon the doctrine 
of state sovereignty, and their immediate pur- 
pose was to get the Senate formally pledged to 
this principle in its direct bearings on the slavery 
question. Hence the series was very logically 
opened by stating how the Union came into 
existence under the Constitution. It is declared 
that every State " entered into the Union " by 
its own voluntary act. The old Union under the 
Articles of Confederation, therefore, evidently 
had ceased to exist some time before ; when and 
how, Calhoun unfortunately forgot to say. The 
Senate, however, with thirty-one against thirteen 
votes, assented to this bold falsification of a 
plain historical fact. 

This premise once secured, Calhoun had won 
the game. From the purely Confederate nature 
of the Union the second resolution w^as deduced : 
that the intermeddling of States or of a " com- 
bination of their citizens with the domestic in- 
stitutions or police of the others, on any ground, 
or under any pretext whatever, political, moral, 
or religious, with a view to their alteration or 
subversion," is "not warranted by the Con- 
stitution." Pompous and positive as this reso- 
lution sounded, it was of so gelatinous a char- 
acter that, while the political agitator could do 



190 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

anything he pleased with it, the constitutional 
jurist could not keep the smallest particle of it 
firmly between his fingers. Who was able to 
enumerate " the domestic institutions " to which 
the doctrine of the resolution could be rightfully 
applied ? Webster showed conckisively that 
slavery, for one, did not belong to them. Where, 
too, was the master mind which could give a 
serviceable definition of " intermeddling," or of 
" with a view to their alteration," or of " not 
warranted by the Constitution " ? If all this 
was to have so precise a meaning that the 
doctrines of rights should and could be fixed in 
laws, and their observance secured by compulsory 
legal measures, — and it was, obviously, only on 
this supjjosition that they could serve the purpose 
intended, — then everything which had relation 
to the domestic institutions of other States would 
become a punishable violation of the Constitution. 
The existence of slavery had to vanish from the 
consciousness of the free States ; for until this 
happened their thf-ughts must be in some de- 
gree occupied with it ; the thoughts must mani- 
fest themselves, and every manifestation of the 
thoughts had, in and of itself, a tendency to 
operate an " alteration " of the existing state of 
things. Yet the resolution served well enough 
Calhoun's main purpose. What this was, he 
plainly told in his rejoinder to the suggestion to 



UNDER VAN BUREN 191 

strike out the word "religious," — that "the 
whole spirit of the resolution hinged on that 
word." The Senate was to declare that the 
anathema of the Constitution rested on the heads 
of the fanatics who presumed to question the 
rightfulness of negro slavery on moral and 
religious grounds ; and the Senate complied with 
the demand ; only fourteen out of forty-five votes 
being recorded in favor of striking out the words 
"moral" and "religious." But what had Calhoun 
gained by that, even supposing that his inter- 
pretation of the spirit of the Constitution was 
correct ? Would the religious convictions of the 
people be subverted by the Constitution, or would 
the latter become a dead letter from the moment 
when it stood in acknowledged antagonism to 
the former? Always there was the same fun- 
damental error in all his reckoning. He clearly 
perceives that the whole slavery question hinges 
upon the political, economical, and moral an- 
tagonism between slavery and liberty, tries to 
suppress some manifestations of it, and draws 
from that suppression conclusions, as if it were 
identical with the suppression of the antagonism 
itself. But the futility of his efforts has pressed 
him another step forward : instead of merely 
forbidding the agitation to enter the Capitol, he 
now bids Congress declare that the Constitution 
wants to see every door in the free States 
hermetically closed against it. 



192 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

To understand the whole import of the sec- 
ond resohition it is, however, necessary to read 
it in connection with the third, which indirectly 
overthrew the demand of the former, but of 
course in favor of slavery. This third resolu- 
tion declared it to be the duty of the Federal 
government to use its powers in such a manner 
as "to give . . . increased stability and secu- 
rity to the domestic institutions of the States 
that compose the Union," The people of the 
free States were to have no political, moral, or 
religious thoughts on slavery, or at least not to 
manifest them in any way whatever disagree- 
able to the slave-holding States ; but they were 
bound, through the Federal government, ac- 
tively to exert themselves in its favor. It is 
not said in what manner and to what extent 
this was to be done ; but did not the very gen- 
erality of the terms used imply that it had to 
be done in any manner and to any extent de- 
clared necessary by the slave-holding States? 
For they alone had the right to judge what the 
stability and security of their peculiar institu- 
tion demanded. There was not a trace of doc- 
trinarian spirit in this resolution. It was a pos- 
itive programme, big with consequences which 
would have curdled the blood in the veins of 
Calhoun himself, if he had foreseen them all. 
It was the first step towards deriving the prac- 



UNDER VAN BUREN 193 

tical results of the doctrine of the " positive 
good ; " the first step towards securing the ser- 
vices of the Federal government for the glorious 
work of slavery propagandisni. 

The fourth resolution applied the foregoing 
doctrines by name to slavery, declaring all at- 
tacks on it " a manifest breach of faith, and a 
violation of the most solemn obligations, moral 
and religions." The Senate called upon to in- 
struct the people in this spirit about their re- 
ligious obligations ; abolition, according to Cal- 
houn, in possession of the pulpits, the schools, 
and the press ; the abolitionists declaring sla- 
very " the sum of all villainies," — was anything 
more needed to prove that two antagonistic 
principles were here in deadly conflict? With 
this one line Calhoun had irrefutably demon- 
strated the vanity of all his efforts to save sla- 
very and the Union. 

The next resolution read, — 

" Resolved, That the intermeddling of any State 
or States, or their citizens, to abolish slavery in this 
District, or in any of the Territories, on the ground 
or under the pretext that it is immoral or sinful, or 
the passage of any act or measure of Congress with 
that view, would be a direct and dangerous attack on 
the institutions of all the slave-holding States." 

If all that had been asserted in the preceding 
resolutions was correct, this one was certainly 



194 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

incontrovertible ; therefore it was all the more 
sionificant that Calhoun refrained from declar- 
ing the abolition of slavery in the District 
of Columbia unconstitutional, although he ex- 
pressly stated this to be his opinion. But while 
he thus politely and obligingly bowed to the 
constitutional doctrines of the North, its moral 
and religious convictions were once more imperi- 
ously bidden to leave this question alone. " The 
deluded agitators must be plainly told that it is 
no concern of theirs what is the character of 
our institutions." Not a finger was to be raised 
against slavery "under the pretext" of its im- 
morality or sinfulness, not only where it actu- 
ally existed, but also, added the sixth and last 
resolution, where it might exist in future. 

" To refuse to extend to the Southern and Western 
States any advantage which would tend to strengthen 
or render them more secure, or to increase their limits 
or population by the annexation of new territory or 
states, on the assumption or under the pretext that 
the institution o£ slavery, as it exists among them, is 
immoral or sinful, or otherwise obnoxious, would be 
contrary to that equality of rights and advantages 
which the Constitution was intended to secure alike 
to all the members of the Union." 

One great merit this last resolution had : its 
language was so plain that no child could mis- 
understand it. The principle of slavery pro- 



UNDER VAN BUREN 195 

pagandismwas proclaimed with the utmost bold- 
ness, and the Federal government was absolutely 
denied the right to interfere with it on any 
ground or pretext connected in any way what- 
ever with slavery. Not to interfere was, how- 
ever, in this case, identical with an obligation to 
lend a helping hand, for " the annexation of new 
territory or states " could be effected only by the 
Union. And why should the Union not exult- 
ingly march on under the black flag of slavery 
as far as the South was good enough to lead it ? 
It is true, " many in the South once believed that 
it was a moral and political evil," but " that folly 
and delusion are gone. We see it now in its 
true light, and regard it as the most safe and 
stable basis for free institutions in the world. 
. . . The blessing of this state of things ex- 
tends beyond the limits of the South. It makes 
that section the balance of the system ; the 
great conservative power, which ])revents other 
portions, less fortunately constituted [!], from 
rushing into conflict." Verily, here is a doc- 
trinaire with a positiveness in his doctrines 
powerful enough to grind into dust the col- 
umns of the most gigantic political edifice. Not 
long ago Calhoun had declared that nothing 
was needed to render the South perfectly safe 
save concert of will and action. Now, Provi- 
dence had thrown ample opportunities into the 



196 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

way of the Union to test whether that was 
sufficient to cajole and whip the North into 
obedience, and to force upon it this programme 
of the slave power, which, by the very conscious- 
ness of its hopeless weakness, was under the im- 
perious necessity of rendering itself the despotic 
master of the Union, in order to save itself. 

After this great sally, several years passed 
ere Calhoun thought it opportune to make the 
next decisive move in the cause of self-gfovern- 
ment and republican liberty on the basis of 
slavery. The waves of party strife rolled high 
during all these years, and Calhoun was far 
from being an unconcerned and idle spectator. 
His speeches of this period fill a stately volume, 
and are fully on a level with his other parlia- 
mentary efforts on general legislative topics. 
Yet the biographer, who confines himself to 
what is really characteristic of the man or to 
what has exerted a determining influence on the 
history of his country, can pass them over with 
a few general remarks. What he himself said 
of the extraordinary session of Congress in 1841 
applies, so far as he is concerned, to this whole 
time. " What are we doing, and what engrosses 
all our attention from morn to noon, and from 
week to week, ever since our arrival here at the 
commencement of this extraordinai'y session, 
and will continue till its end ? What but banks, 



.UNDER VAN BUREN 197 

loans, stocks, tariffs, distribution, and supplies ? " 
The old economical controversies, more or less 
altered by circumstances, are the battle-ground of 
the parties, fighting with undiminished ardor and 
varying success. The old arguments are repeated 
ad nauseam. Though all tlie questions were of 
the highest importance, and much erudition, in- 
genuity, eloquence, and passion were displayed 
on both sides, the continuous reading of the 
debates is simply treadmill work. Calhoun's 
speeches, too, abound with repetitions. The sta- 
tistical data, the illustrations, the arrangement 
of the thoughts, change ; but he fights for his 
old doctrines with the old reasons : independent 
treasury, no bank, no internal improvements, no 
protective tariff, no distribution of the proceeds 
of the sale of the public lands, cession of the 
public lands to the States in which they are sit- 
uated, no loans, etc. A good deal of sound rea- 
soning, a good deal of bold and sometimes reck- 
less generalizing, now and then exaggerated into 
a downright absurdit}'^, may be found in all his 
speeches on these interesting subjects. The 
thorough student of the general history of the 
United States cannot dispense with perusing 
them all carefully, but they do not show either 
the man or the statesman in a new light. From 
the personal point of view, they are the most 
interesting on account of some sharp encounters 



198 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

wbicli he had with Clay and "Webster. Each 
of the three jri-eat senators tried to demonstrate 
his own consistency throughout his political ca- 
reer, and the inconsistency which had marked 
that of his adversary ; and each of them was per- 
fectly successfid as to the latter task, and, in 
spite of infinite ingenuity and eloquence, sadly 
failed as to the former. AVith the change 
of conditions, their political convictions had 
changed, and, by changing these, they had 
learned to read the Constitution in a different 
way. Neither of them lost anything in the es- 
timation of the peoj)le by this fact, because it 
was an honest change of opinion, and since their 
constituents had gone through the same process 
they might have had the manliness and candor 
to avow it unreservedly. But perhaps the re- 
proach that not one of them ventured upon a 
standpoint of such moral elevation rests more 
upon the general tendency of American politics 
than upon them personally. Once, indeed, Cal- 
houn openly confessed that he had been originally 
inclined to take a latitudinarian and national 
view of the powers of the Federal government ; 
but when he spoke in the deep and incisive 
tones of an authority, — and that became more 
and more his habitual way of speaking, — or 
when an opponent had nettled his self-love, he 
was but too easily betrayed into wasting his 



h 



UNDER VAN BUREN 199 

time and his ability in vain attempts to knead 
his earlier sayings and political acts into the 
mould of his present convictions. 

Some of the speeches of this period require 
particular notice, but they are precisely those 
which were only remotely or not at all con- 
nected with the party issues. 

The illegitimate connection of the civil ser- 
vice with party politics had become such a cry- 
ing evil that another effort was made to strike 
it at the root ; but again the would-be reform- 
ers sought the root where it did not lie. A bill 
was introduced and debated upon, which, as 
Calhoun expressed it, proposed " to inflict the 
penalty of dismission on a large class of the offi- 
cers of this government, who shall electioneer, 
or attempt to control or influence the election 
of public functionaries either of tlie general or 
state govei'nments, without distinguishing be- 
tween their official and individual character as 
citizens." Calhoun, who sjjoke on the bill on 
February 22, 1839, declared it for this reason 
unconstitutional. We need not inquire whether 
this charge was well founded, or whether he 
made good his case as to the constitutional ques- 
tion. Supposing that he was right, this defect 
of the bill could have been easily mended ; but 
he very justly asserted that such a law would 
'"'' prove either useless, or worse than useless." 



200 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

" But suppose the immediate object of the bill ac- 
complished, and the office-holders rendered perfectly 
silent and passive, it might even then be doubted 
whether it would cause any diminution in the influ- 
ence of patronage over elections. It would indeed 
greatly reduce the influence of the office-holders. 
They would become the most insignificant portion of 
the community, as far as elections were concerned. 
But just in the same proportion as they might sink, 
the no less formidable corps of the office-seekers 
would rise in importance. The struggle for power 
between the ins and the outs would not abate in 
the least, in violence or intensity, by the silence or 
inactivity of the office-holders, as the amount of 
patronage, the stake contended for, would remain 
undiminished. Both sides, those in and those out of 
power, would turn from the passive and silent body 
of the incumbents, and court the favor of the active 
corps, that panted to supplant them ; and the result 
would be an annual sweep of the former, after every 
election, to make room to reward the latter, — and 
this on whichever side the scale of victory might 
turn. The consequence would be rotation with a 
vensreance. The wheel would turn round with such 
velocity that anything like a stable system of policy 
would be impossible. Each temporary occupant, who 
might be thrown into office by the whirl, would seize 
the moment to make the most of his good fortune, 
before he might be displaced by his successor, and a 
system (if such it might be called) would follow, not 
less corrupting than unstable." 



UNDER VAN BUREN 201 

That was all true enough, but what had he 
to propose instead ? " Place the office-holders, 
with their yearly salaries, beyond the reach of 
the executive power, and they would in a short 
time be as mute and inactive as this bill pro- 
poses to make them. Their voice, I promise, 
would then be scarcely raised at elections, or 
their persons be found at the polls." If he had 
changed but one word, — if he had said party in 
2J0wer instead of executive power, — this advice 
would, indeed, have been the egg of Columbus. 
The context hardly allows a doubt that he now, 
as before, only wished to assign a controlling 
influence over the removals to Congress or the 
Senate ; and if that was to be the whole reform, 
his law, like the bill under discussion, would 
have been " viseless, or worse than useless." As 
concerning the slavery conflict, so also in this 
question, he foresaw and foretold the impending 
dangers and inevitable evil consequences, and 
he showed great ability in criticising the opin- 
ions of the other political physicians ; but his 
own prescriptions were poisonous drugs. 

In respect to the civil service, this is not 
very surprising, because, though Calhoun saw 
clearer than most of his contemporaries, he had 
after all not made a serious effort to push his 
examination beyond the surface of the ques- 
tion ; another generation was to grapple with 



202 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

this problem, for it had to grow infinitely worse 
ere the necessity of getting at the bottom of 
it could be fully realized. But of the slavery 
conflict he had a better right than anybody to 
say, as he frequently did, that he had thor- 
oughly examined it in all its bearings, and that 
he understood it. Therefore the apodeictic man- 
ner in which he promised a radical cure, if but 
the application of his remedies would be con- 
sented to, exposes him to the charge of having 
been a dishonest quack, if he is not admitted 
to have been an honest fanatic, who, like all 
fanatics, viewed his subject but from one fixed 
point and under one unchangeable visual angle. 

This deep conviction of his own infallibility 
in relation to everything concerning slavery 
rendered it a very significant fact that he once 
was compelled to admit that he was at his wits' 
end, and had no advice to offer. Of course 
neither pride nor policy allowed the very words 
to fall from his lips, but the folded arms and 
knitted brow with which, after reiterated loud 
complaints, he suffered the government to re- 
main in the embarrassing situation, into which 
it had been thrown by trying to serve the in- 
terests of the slave-holders, spoke with a most 
impressive eloquence. 

Two American vessels with negroes on board, 
the Comet and the Encomium, had been 



UNDER VAN BUREN 203 

stranded, in 1830 and 1834, on the false keys 
of the Bahama Ishmds, and the local authorities 
of Nassau, New Providence, had refused to re- 
cognize the negroes as slaves and deliver them 
up to their owners. In 1885 a very similar case 
occurred. Tlie brig Enterprise was forced by 
stress of weather into Port Hamilton, Ber- 
muda, and the local authorities detained the 
slaves, pretending that they had become free- 
men by coming within English jurisdiction. 
The United States government took up all 
three cases in behalf of the owners, and claimed 
a fair compensation. England at last yielded 
as to the first two, but persisted in her refusal 
as to the last, and, at the same time, declared 
that no such claim woidd ever again be allowed. 
This distinction was based upon the fact " that 
before the Enterprise arrived at Bermuda slavery 
had been abolished in the British Empire." 

On March 4, 1840, Calhoun introduced in 
the Senate a set of resolutions declaratory of 
what he conceived to be the principles of the 
law of nations applying to the case, and severely 
condemning the course of the English author- 
ities. Some days later he delivered a long 
speech in support of the resolutions, and had 
the satisfaction of seeing them unanimously 
adopted. The South liked to dwell upon this 
fact as a striking proof of the justice of its 



204 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

claims. The unanimity of the Senate was, how- 
ever, only apparent. Of fifty-two senators, only 
thirty-three voted ; nineteen were evidently not 
satisfied that Calhoun had made good his case, 
but for reasons best known to themselves they 
preferred not to say so. The " unanimous " 
vote of the Senate was, in fact, a proof of the 
awe in which almost all the Northern politi- 
cians stood of the slave power, but there was 
very little reason to draw from it the conclu- 
sion that the doctrine propounded in the resolu- 
tions could not be called into question. Adams, 
who certainly knew as much of the law of na- 
tions as any member of Congress, wrote con- 
cerning the Enterprise resolutions, " Calhoun 
crows about his success in imposing his own 
bastard law of nations upon the Senate by his 
pi-eposterous resolutions, and chuckles at Web- 
ster's appealing to those resolutions now, after 
dodging from the duty of refuting and con- 
founding them then." 

The essential point of Calhovm's doctrine was 
that he denied the right of England, with re- 
gard to citizens of foreign countries, to make 
any difference between slaves and other pro- 
perty, if by some unavoidable cause the slaves 
should momentarily come within the limits of 
her jurisdiction. This opinion was based upon 
the assertion that slavery was fully recognized 



UNDER VAN BUREN 205 

by the law of nations. England did not directly 
and in so many words assert the contrary, but 
she proved by her acts that, at least so far as 
any positive obligations could be deduced from 
this principle, she refused to acknowledge its 
existence or its binding force upon her. This 
fact was in itself proof absolute that Calhoun's 
assertion could at best be true only with a most 
important qualification. He overlooked the fact 
that the law of nations is not immutable, but 
constantly changing and developing with the 
general development of -civilization. The very 
fact that England assumed the position she did 
sufficiently proved that this law was in a state 
of transition as to the principle in question. 
The law of nations rests upon the free consent 
of the civilized peoples. If, therefore, the great- 
est maritime power of the world, with most ex- 
tensive possessions adjacent to the sea or sur- 
rounded by it in all parts of the globe, withdrew 
its assent to a principle of which the practical 
application was confined to the seacoast, it 
could no longer be maintained. That this was 
so with regard to the case in hand was the more 
evident,' because none of the other European 
powers of any consequence had a practical in- 
terest in the question, and the hostility of pub- 
lic opinion all over the civilized world against 
slavery was constantly and rapidly increasing. 



206 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Calhoun's resolutions, therefore, were neither 
more nor less than a vain protest against the 
onward course of civilization, and the Senate, 
by " unanimously " adopting them, announced 
to the world that the most democratic and most 
progressive state of the universe was bound to 
cry Halt! and pull back the wheel of time 
whenever and wherever the interests of the 
slave-holders were in danger of being crushed 
by it. 

To oblige the slave power, the Senate had 
made an ugly blot on the record of the United 
States, and the slave power did not derive the 
least advantage from it, nay, it even sustained 
positive damage. England did not change her 
course by a single point on account of the reso- 
lutions, and the attention of the world had again 
been called in the most pointed manner to the 
allegation that slavery was indeed a " positive 
good " and the best foundation of liberty. That 
was a positive damage, and no small one, for 
every syllable of what Calhoun had said years 
ago, with such impressive emphasis about the 
part played by the moral convictions in the 
tragedy of this conflict, was true. Every such 
manifestation of the slave power caused its op- 
ponents to write with larger letters on their 
own banner the device under which the sla- 
vocracy had been sailing ever since the adoption 



UNDER VAN BUREN 207 

of the Constitution : Let us alone ! Slavery is a 
state institution with which the Federal govern- 
ment has no concern. Let us alone ! To be 
left alone in this sense was, however, to be 
delivered over to destruction by the moral and 
economical as^encies which rule the world. The 
" Let us alone " of the slave-holders meant, 
You have not only to shut your eyes and ears, 
but also to lock up your thoughts and your con- 
sciences, whenever our interests require you to 
do so ; for slavery is a domestic institution of 
the sovereign States ; but it is your duty to 
throw the whole weight of the Union for us 
into the scales, whenever we tell you that our 
safety demands it, for the Constitution recog- 
nizes and " guarantees " slavery. How long 
would the North submit to such a bargain? 
That question nobody could answer as yet ; but 
two things were certain : every time that the 
Federal s:overnment submitted to its enforce- 
ment, the number of those in the North who 
grew restive under it increased ; and every time 
that the slave-holders had succeeded in enfor- 
cing it, they were compelled to push both sides 
of their claim a long step farther. Calhoun, 
luiderstanding the nature of the slavery ques- 
tion better than any other Southern man, had 
to march far ahead on both diverging lines, and 
therefore, while no other single man has done 



208 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

so mucli to erect the temple of the slave power, 
also no other single man has done so much to 
render its sudden downfall inevitable and to 
hasten the catastrophe. So it was in this case. 
What a triumph that not a single senator dared 
to raise his voice against the " bastard law of 
nations," and what a portentous humiliation to 
have nothing but " words, words, and again 
words " to opjiose to England's " outrageous 
course " ! The South pocketed at the same time 
the glorious impotent resolutions and a signal 
defeat. 

There is no question that Calhoun veiy 
keenly felt the defeat, for he had declared that 
a " vital principle " was involved for the South, 
and that England " interdicted nearly as effec- 
tually the intercourse by sea between one half 
of this Union and the other, as to the greatest 
and most valuable portion of the property of 
the South, as if she was to send out cruisers 
against it." Yet he soon scrupulously avoided 
touching upon the question even in private con- 
versation. But he deemed the success which 
he had obtained over the North of more import, 
for the obvious reason that the fate of the slave 
power depended not upon the international, but 
upon the national, standing of slavery. In No- 
vember, 1841, the English authorities of Nas- 
sau dared to repeat their former offence under 



UNDER VAN BUREN 209 

most aggravating- circumstances, for the brig 
Creole was brought into the harbor by the very 
slaves who had successfully revolted and killed 
one of the slave-holders in the struggle. Yet 
Calhoim did not deem it necessary to hurl a new 
set of resolutions against England ; nay, he even 
refrained from venting his wrath in a speech ; 
but he did not omit to commend very heartily 
the remonstrance of Webster, as Secretary of 
State, which was, indeed, based entirely on the 
resolutions of March 4, 1840. " The letter 
which had been read," he said, " was drawn up 
with great ability, and covered the ground which 
had been assumed on this subject by all parties 
in the Senate." He hoped that it would " have 
a beneficial effect, not only upon the United 
States, but Great Britain. Coming from the 
quarter it did, this document would do more 
good than in coming from any other quarter." 

Was it not an ominous sign of the times that 
such praise, in such an affair, was bestowed 
upon Daniel Webster from these lips ? Fur- 
ther, the great statesman of Massachusetts could 
boast of having won the approval of the great 
Carolinian in another question relating to sla- 
very. To the surprise of most people, as well 
in the North as in the South, Calhoun was in 
favor of the ratification of the treaty concluded 
at W^ashington, on August 9, 1842, in which 



210 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tlie high contracting powers, England and the 
United States, obligated themselves to main- 
tain a sqviadron of a certain strength on the 
African coast for the purjiose of supj)ressing 
the slave-trade. It seems hardly necessary to 
state that Calhoun was not pleased with the 
agreement ; very far from it, indeed. He pre- 
mised his affirmative vote by the declaration 
"that there were several circumstances which 
caused no small repugnance on his part to any 
stipulations whatever with Great Britain on the 
subject of those articles ; and he would add 
that he would have been gratified if they and 
all other stijiulations on the subject could have 
been entirely omitted ; but he must, at the same 
time, say he did not see how it was possible to 
avoid entering into some arrangement on the 
subject," and, considering all the circumstances 
of the case, he did not think this agreement 
bad enough to justify the rejection of the whole 
treaty, while it was better than to maintain the 
dangerous status qvo. If Calhoun thought 
thus, it is not astonishing that Adams declared 
" the negotiation itself a Scapinade ; a struggle 
between the plenipotentiaries to outwit each 
other, and to circumvent both countries by a 
slippery compromise between freedom and sla- 
very." But Calhoun was certainly no friend of 
slippery compromises. Was it then really only 



UNDER VAN BUREN 211 

the embarrassing situation of the United States 
which caused hira to consent to this ? Adams 
thought not. He writes, "There is a temper- 
ance in his [Calhoun's] manner, obviously aim- 
ing to conciliate the Northern political sopranos, 
who abhor slavery, and help to forge fetters 
for the slave." But what reason did he have to 
wish just now to conciliate this numerous family 
of the species " dough-face " ? 

The ambitious wish which had so long and 
so violently agitated Calhoun's life while he 
stood in his prime had once more taken hold 
of his mind, now that he had entered upon the 
years in which all that this earth has to be- 
stow begins to lose its charm and gloss, because 
the twilight has set in and the evening shades 
are darkening. The deep animosity which the 
nullification conflict had excited against him 
throuohout the North had so far subsided that 
South Carolina ventured to urge upon her sister 
States his claims on the presidency. She in- 
tended no empty compliment. Her own ad- 
miration for her favorite son did not so entirely 
becloud her judgment that she flattered her- 
self and him with the anticipation of certain 
success ; but she deemed it so far possible that 
she entered his name upon the list of candi- 
dates with all the hot and overbearing impetu- 
osity with which she was wont to take up every 



212 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

important question. Calhoun, too, indulged in 
the hope that the dream of his earlier manhood 
might at last be realized. At the end of 1842 
he resigned his seat in the Senate, the resigna- 
tion to take effect from the close of the 27th 
Congress. The Legislature of South Carolina, 
immediately upon the acceptance of the resig- 
nation, unanimously nominated him a candi- 
date for election as President of the United 

States. 

To-day nobody will question that Calhoun 
was by far the superior of all his Democratic 
competitors in intellect and in justly acquired 
fame and character ; and even at that time but 
few failed to see this, though many did not see 
fit publicly to acknowledge the fact. But in 
spite of his great superiority in all the essential 
qualities, no calm observer could doubt for a 
moment that his hopes were sure to be disap- 
pointed. The second and third rate politicians 
exerted, directly or indirectly, so great ^n in- 
fluence upon the party nominations that the 
chances of the first men of the nation to reach, 
in ordinary times, the goal of the presidency 
had become exceedingly small. The special in- 
terests of this class of people were better served 
by sending one of their own chiefs into the 
White House than by elevating to the chair a 
leading statesman, whose renown and influence 



UNDER VAN BUREN 213 

were not based upon their cheap cunning and 
petty arts. But even if this had been other- 
wise, Calhoun would have had no chance what- 
ever. It was, to say the least, exceedingly 
doubtful whether he could ever be elected, if 
nominated by the party, and therefore it was 
certain that he would never receive the nomi- 
nation. It is true that he was not entirely with- 
out support in some of the Northern States. 
The Irish especially mauifested everywhere 
some predilection for him, on account of his 
pedigree, and in New York, where the Whigs 
indulged very freely in their nativist and anti- 
Catholic tendencies, this predilection could al- 
most be mistaken for genuine enthusiasm. But 
as the first commandment of the political de- 
calogue of the Irish masses was to vote the regu- 
lar ticket, and as his Irish extraction was nearly 
all they knew of him, their support was of very 
little avail, unless his other partisans were nu- 
merous and enthusiastic enough to scai'e his o]> 
ponents within the party into submission. If 
the Southern wing unanimously and emphati- 
cally declared themselves for him, the Northern 
would, perhaps, not dare to resist. 

But only ignorance or blind admiration could 
suppose for a moment that the Southern Demo- 
crats could be marched uj) in serried ranks to 
sustain his candidature. Ever since he had ab- 



214 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

jured his early national and latitudinarian bias, 
and become an " honest nullifier " in the ser- 
vice of the slavocracy, he had unfitted himself 
to be the leader of a great national }3arty, be- 
cause he had assumed the leadershijo of an ex- 
treme sectional faction. Perhaps this extreme 
faction was destined, in the course of time, to 
develop into a party which would exercise des- 
potic sway over the whole South. Nay, it was 
sure to come to that, because the correct un- 
derstanding of the slavery conflict must spread 
with its own development. As yet, however, 
ninety-nine out of a hundred saw the slavery 
question through a mist, and therefore even 
those who would have followed Calhoun through 
thick and thin, to even out-Heroding Herod, 
were now shocked and dismayed by his radi- 
calism. There was probably not a single slave- 
holder in the whole Union who was not glad to 
have in the United States Senate such a cham- 
pion of the peculiar institution, whose courage 
and will were equal to any emergency; but 
outside of South Carolina, the number of those 
who were very anxious to see him at the head 
of the government was comparatively small. 

The Calhounites fought stubbornly and carried 
their point in the first preliminary question — ■ 
the postponing of the national convention to the 
spring of 1844 — against the adherents of Van 



UNDER VAN BUREN 215 

Buren, wlio had wished to set it for as early a 
date as November, 1843. In the other contro- 
verted previous question, however, the partisans 
of Van Buren were all the more unyielding. 
The Calhounites wanted the delegates to the 
national convention elected by districts, while 
their opponents would have the decision as to 
the mode of election left to the States. If the 
national convention was to represent, so far as 
possible, not the political log-rollers, but the 
party, the preference had undoubtedly to be 
accorded to the proposition of the Calhounites ; 
but it was certainly somewhat strange that they, 
who believed themselves to have a monopoly of 
the pure states-rights doctrine, ventured to wish 
to give prescriptions to the " States." 

So far as their course was determined by 
"what they supposed to be the interest of their 
respective candidates, both factions might have 
saved their time and temper, and allowed this 
question to take care of itself. Van Buren was 
successful in the trial heat, but his final morti- 
fication was only the greater ; for after all he 
lost the race, although his foremost competitor 
had taken the wise resolution to withdraw from 
it altogether on January 20, 1844. 

South Carolina was dismayed, but she did 
not, as she had done heretofore, throw away her 
electoral votes by voting for some candidate of 



216 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

her own. This time she submitted to the party 
behest, although she did it with anything but 
good grace. The defeat of Calhoun's candida- 
ture had, how^ever, but little to do with her anger. 
She indulged once more in a spasm of loud- 
mouthed passion on account of the double face 
which James K. Polk, the Democratic candidate, 
had seen fit to put on with regard to the tariff 
question, in order to secure for himself the 
electoral vote of Penns3dvania, without which 
his election was deemed imj^ossible. Polk was 
accused of having gone over, bag and baggage, 
to the camp of the protectionists ; indignation 
meetings and dinners, with an abundance of 
furious toasts, denunciations, and threats, were 
the order of the da}^ ; the " Charleston Mercury " 
was not satisfied with urging " legislative nullifi- 
cation," but invited the people of the State to 
adopt "ulterior measures," in case that "should 
prove inadequate." 

There is always a fire where such volumes of 
smoke becloud the sky ; but this time the quan- 
tity of smoke stood in no proportion to the size 
or heat of the fire. Calhoun disapproved of 
this wild ado about so little, and that now hap- 
pened quite frequently which but a few weeks 
before had seemed impossible, — that his name 
was not mentioned at all at the political festivi- 
ties of the radicals. He did not take this slight 



UNDER VAN BUREN 217 

much to heart, nor had he any reason to do so. 
Not only was it a matter of course that Polk 
had not become a protectionist, but it was also 
perfectly evident that for the present the tariff 
was but a question of the second or third order. 
In both parties the opinions were far from be- 
ing in full accord on this head, and in neither 
did the masses of those who were not most 
immediately interested in it feel very deeply 
about it. And now shoidd a storm be artifi- 
cially raised about a little more or less of duties, 
and thereby the gauntlet thrown into the face 
not only of the whole Whig party. North and 
South, but of all those who were too dull of 
comprehension to see the conservative force of 
nullification, and who clung to the old-fashioned 
idea that a law is a law, and has to be obeyed, 
— now, when the opportunity was offered of 
securing a prize of incalculable value to the 
democracy? Holmes and Rhett might amuse 
their followers by a revival of the nullification 
idea, " meditate ulterior measures," talk of dis- 
union, and declare that " to this complexion it 
must come at last ; " Calhoun had packed away 
his thunderbolts, and thus far he alone knew 
how to use them effectually. 

So early as 1839 he had, in the face of al- 
most countless declarations to the contrary, 
and yet apparently in good faith, astonished 



218 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the Senate by the emphatic assertion that a dis- 
solution of the Union ever had been, and would 
remain in all future time, an imaginary danger. 
Replying to Mr. Buchanan, he had said : — 

" The senator has done no more than justice to 
that measure [the compromise taritt']. It terminated 
honestly and fairly, without the sacrifice of any in- 
terest, one of the most dangerous controversies that 
ever disturbed the Union or endangered its exist- 
ence. Not the danger of dismemberment, as we learn 
from the senator, was anticipated abroad. No, the 
danger lay in a different direction. Dismemberment 
is not the only mode in which our Union may be 
destroyed. It is a Federal Union, an Union of sov- 
ereign States, and can be as effectually and much 
more easily destroyed by consolidation than by dis- 
viemberment. He wbo knows anything of the history 
of our race and the workings of the human breast 
best understands tbe great and almost insuperable 
difficulties in the way of dissolution. There is scarcely 
an instance on record of any people, speaking the 
same language and having the same government and 
laws, who have ever dissolved their political connec- 
tions through internal causes or struggles. . . . Tbe 
constant struggle is to enlarge, and not to divide ; and 
there neither is nor ever has been the least danger 
that our Union would terminate in dissolution." 

That was no bait thrown to " the political 
sopranos " of the North. He believed what he 
said, yet he did not mean to retract a single syl- 



UNDER VAN BUREN 219 

lable of what he had declared so often before. 
The Union and abolition, as he had once ex- 
pressed it, cannot coexist. If tlie spirit of the 
fanatical visionaries of the North is not chained 
down, then the Union is irretrievably gone, for 
between the Union and slavery the Sonth has 
no choice. But he is satisfied that the South 
will never be jiressed before this alternative. 
In the letter, before mentioned, to the citizens 
of Athens, he had written : — 

"Of all the questions which have been agitated 
under our government, abolition is that in which we 
of the South have the deepest concern. It strikes 
directly and fatally, not only at our prosperity, but 
our existence as a people. Should it succeed, our fate 
would be worse than that of the aborigines whom we 
have driven out, or the slaves whom we command. 
It is a question that admits of neither concession nor 
compromise. . . . There is one point in connection 
with this important subject on which the South 
ought to be fully informed. From all that I saw and 
heard during the session, I am perfectly satisfied that 
we must look to ourselves, and ourselves only, for 
safety. It is perfectly idle to look to the non-slave- 
holdinc: States to arrest the attacks of the fanatics. 
. . . Nor would it be less vain to look to Congress. 
The same cause that pi'events the non-slave-holding 
States from interference in our favor at home will 
equally prevent Congress. . . . But, if true to our- 
selves, we need neither their sympathy nor aid. The 



220 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Constitution has placed in our power ample means, 
short of secession or disunion, to protect ourselves." 

We have seen more than once that he had 
his hours of despondency, when this conviction 
was severely shaken, but it was never wholly 
relinquished. And now he thought that the 
day had come when a pillar of such gigantic 
dimensions could be put as an additional sup- 
port under the dome of slavery that it would 
be able to withstand all the assaults of aboli- 
tionism. The annexation of Texas was to ren- 
der the Union indissoluble by strengthening the 
slave power so much that it would have nothing 
more to apprehend. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TEXAS 

As early as May 23, 1836, Calhoun had de- 
clared in the Senate that he — 

" had made up his mind not only to recognize the 
independence of Texas, but for her admission into 
this Union ; and if the Texans managed their affairs 
prudently, they would soon be called upon to decide 
that question. No man could suppose for a moment 
that that country could ever come again under the 
dominion of Mexico ; and he was of opinion that it 
was not for our interests that there should be an in- 
dependent community between us and Mexico. There 
were powerful reasons why Texas should be a part 
of this Union. The Southern States, owning a slave 
population, were deeply interested in preventing that 
country from having the power to annoy them." 

Thus, but one month after the battle of Ja- 
cinto, he publicly and formally announced his 
programme with regard to the question which 
was to be the pivotal point on which the fate 
of slavery was to turn. No other single indi- 
vidual did so much as he to bring about 
the annexation. He himself has emphatically 



222 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

claimed that merit, and he considered it the 
greatest and most beneficent achievement of his 
public career. Perhaps it was, as things finally 
turned out, but he would have cursed the day 
on which he put his hand to the plough, if 
he had known what a dragon seed was to be 
planted. On February 24, 1847, when the har- 
vesting of the fatal crop had already begun, he 
said in the Senate : — 

" I trust, Mr. President, there will be no dispute 
hereafter as to who is the real author of annexation. 
Less than twelve months since, I had many compet- 
itors for that honor : the official organ here claimed, 
if my memory serves me, a large share for Mr. 
Polk and his administration, and not less than half a 
dozen competitors from other quarters asserted them- 
selves to be the real authors. But now, since the 
war [with Mexico] has become unpopular, they all 
seem to agree that I, in reality, am the author of 
annexation. I will not put the honor aside. I may 
now rightfully and indisputably claim to be the au- 
thor of that great measure, — a measure which has 
so much extended the domains of the Union ; which 
has added so largely to its productive powers ; which 
promises so greatly to extend its commerce ; which 
has stimulated its industry, and given security to our 
most exposed frontier. I take pride to myself as 
being the author of this great measure." 

Though there is no positive proof for it, Ben- 
ton's allegation is therefore probably true, that 



TEXAS 223 

Callioun was also the real author of the Intrigue 
which was to give the annexation wheel the 
necessary impetus, after several years had been 
spent in unsuccessful attempts to put it pro- 
perly into motion. Other circumstances point 
in the same direction, and that he at first care- 
fully kept himself concealed in the background 
is satisfactorily explained by the fact that the 
immediate purpose of the intrigue was to bring 
the still enormous influence of Jackson into 
play. 

In the beoinnino: of 1843 a Baltimore news- 
paper published a letter of Gilmer, dated Jan- 
uary 10, to "• a friend " (Duff Green) in Mary- 
land, on the necessity of the annexation of 
Texas. Benton says that the letter was like a 
flash of lightning from a clear sky. The public, 
however, wei*e allowed to settle down once more 
into indolent unconcern, for what followed was 
played under cover. The letter touched most 
strongly the two chords which were sure to find 
the loudest echo in Jackson's breast : preserva- 
tion arainst England's ambitious desires and the 
streno;theninsf of the Union. But as the name 
of Gilmer, as well as Green, awakened the sus- 
l^icion that Calhoun was seated in the prompt- 
er's box, the letter was sent to the " Sage of 
the Hermitage " by Aaron V. Brown, of Ten- 
nessee, who was but an unconscious tool in 



224 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

other hands. Jackson answered at once in the 
tone desired, and although the letter had been 
confessedly asked for only for the purpose of 
working on the masses, it was now carefully put 
away until the opportune moment for its pub- 
lication should come. Those who held the 
wires behind the curtain had attained their im- 
mediate end. Jackson had irrevocably engaged 
himself for immediate annexation. Without 
himself being aware of it, he had thereby de- 
prived himself of the possibility of throwing his 
whole weight into the scales in favor of Van 
Buren ; for immediate annexation was to be 
made the leading issue of the presidential cam- 
paign of 1844. This was another reason for 
the Calhounites to insist upon the j)ostponement 
of the nominating convention, for they needed 
time to tie the South so closely down to this 
programme that it could not afterward draw 
back for the sake of a question of persons. 

A few months later, one of the greatest ob- 
stacles in the way of the annexationists was 
removed by Webster's exit from the Cabinet. 
Upshur, who, after a short interregnum under 
Legare, became Tyler's Secretary of State, 
worked with his whole energy and with consid- 
erable skill at the solution of this problem. On 
October 16, 1843, he proposed a treaty of an- 
nexation to the Texan agent. Texas, however, 



TEXAS 225 

was not now quite so eager to grasp the out- 
stretched hand as she had been heretofore. 
Thanks to the efforts of England and France, 
there was an armistice between her and Mexico, 
and negotiations tending to a formal peace had 
been begun. Van Zandt, the Texan charge d'af- 
faires in Washington, in a letter of January 
17, 1844, called the attention of Upshur to the 
fact that, under these circumstances, a treaty of 
annexation would drive Mexico to the immedi- 
ate resumption of hostilities, and that it would 
also cost Texas the friendship of the mediating 
powers. He therefore confidentially inquired 
whether, in case the proposal of annexation 
were accepted by the Texan executive, the 
President would, even before the ratification of 
the treaty, protect Texas by a sufficiently strong 
land and maritime force against all attacks. 
Upshur dared not answer either yes or no. To 
refuse the request was to drive Texas wholly 
into the arms of England, while to grant it 
was to pledge the President to assume, on his 
own responsibility, as the price of Texas, the 
war of Texas against Mexico. 

The bursting of the cannon Peacemaker on 
board the Princeton, on February 28, 1844, 
ended the embarrassment of the Secretary. To 
whose hands should the consummation of the 
annexation now be confided? The answer to 



226 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

this question was not given, as one would have 
expected, by the President, but by Henry A. 
Wise. Already, more than two years before, 
in a sjieech delivered in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, the hot-blooded Virginian had gone 
into ecstasy over the idea " of planting the lone 
star of the Texan banner on the Mexican capi- 
tol," of extending slavery to the Pacific, and of 
robbing: the Mexican churches. Now he thought 
that the time had come to enter upon the real- 
ization of this sublime programme, and he was 
too great a man to let the trifling considerations 
of propriety, honesty, and right stand in his 
way. He had the effronteiy to go to McDuffie 
and induce him to urge upon Calhoun the ac- 
ceptance of the Secretaryship of State, causing 
him (McDuffie) to believe that he (Wise) had 
been sent by the President. Then he urged 
Tyler to offer the place to Calhoun. The Pre- 
sident at first declined to comply with the wish, 
but he finally submitted, when he had been told 
what his devoted friend had presumed to do. 

Calhoun accepted, declaring at the same time 
that he would resign the office so soon as an- 
nexation should become an accomplished fact. 
It was the universal understanding that it was 
only for this special purpose that he had been 
called to the helm, and that only for this reason 
he consented to become a member of the Cabinet 



TEXAS 227 

of the President, who had no party in Congress, 
and but a corporal's guard of office-holders 
among the j^eople, to sustain him. He after- 
wards fully confirmed this view. On February 
12, 1847, he said in the Senate : — 

"■ According- to my view, the time was not propi- 
tious in one respect. The then President had no 
party in either House. I am not certain that he had 
a single supporter in this, and not more than four or 
five in tlie other. It ajjpeared to me to be a very 
unpropitious moment, under such circumstances, to 
carry through so important a measure. When it 
was intimated to me that I was to be nominated for 
the office of Secretary of State, I strongly remon- 
strated to my friends here ; but before my remon- 
strance reached them, I was unanimously appointed, 
and was compelled to accept. I saw the administra- 
tion was weak, and that the very important measure 
would be liable to be defeated. But circumstances 
made action on it inevitable." 

Niles's " Register " of March 23, 1844, said : 

" The nomination of John C. Calhoun to the office 
of Secretary of State, and the entire unanimity with 
which that nomination has been approved, not only 
by the Senate, but the public press of the country, 
presents the incident, in our judgment, as one of the 
most eventful, certainly in the life of that distin- 
guished and talented statesman, and very possibly, 
also, in the future and fate of the country, the inter- 



228 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ests of which, to a vast extent, indeed, are thereby 
confided to him, at a moment of exceeding deli- 
cacy." 

That the Senate unanimously confirmed the 
nomination of a man of Calhoun's standing was 
a matter of course; but it would have been 
strange indeed if it had with entire unanimity 
*' approved " it, and stranger still if the whole 
press, and consequently also the whole people, 
had rejoiced at it, — too strange to be believed, 
although some years later he himself asserted 
that he had been called " by the unanimous 
voice of the country to take charge of the 
State Department." Just because it was in 
fact "a moment of exceeding delicacy" and 
*' the future and the fate of the country " were, 
"to a vast extent," confided to his hands, the 
nomination of this most thorough-going and 
most daring partisan inevitably caused the deep- 
est concern to all the opponents of annexation, 
while it gave the greatest satisfaction to all its 
advocates. And he fully justified as well the 
expectations of the latter as the apprehensions 
of the former ; but in doing so he blurred his 
fair fame. The man who had had the courage 
to become " an honest nullifier " ought to have 
had the courage to manage this annexation 
business with perfect honesty, though with a 
high hand, and not stoop to sail under false col- 



TEXAS 229 

ors. He would never have forgotten so far as 
he did what he owed to the dignity of his coun- 
try and his personal honor, if he had not thought 
the annexation of such vital importance that 
almost anything seemed justifiable to render 
success more certain. 

From the moment when Calhoun arrived in 
Washington, the negotiations, which had been 
rather stagnant during the interregnum, were 
resumed with zeal, while public opinion was 
aroused by the publication of Jackson's letter 
of February 12, 1843, postdated 1844. John 
Nelson, who provisionally had charge of the 
State Department, had declined to accede to 
the before-mentioned condition of Texas, for 
the obvious reason that the President had not 
the constitutional power to employ armed force 
ao-ainst a state with which the Union was at 
peace. He had, however, assured the Texans 
that Tyler was " not indisposed " to make the 
desired disposition of the troops, in order that 
they might be able to protect Texas at the 
" proper time." Calhoun now tried his luck with 
similar vague phrases, but the Texan agents 
would not be paid off in such a way. On April 
11 he yielded with a heavy heart, informing the 
two plenipotentiaries that an order had been 
issued to concentrate a powerful squadron in the 
Gulf of Mexico, and " to move the disposable 



230 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

forces " on the southwestern frontier " to meet 
any emergency." The only object he attained 
was that he was allowed to evade the greatest 
difficulty by one word, which left a possibility 
open to him, not, indeed, to justify the action of 
the administration, but to defend it by dialectic 
subtleties. He declared that, " during the pend- 
ency of the treaty of annexation, the President 
would deem it his duty to use all the means 
2ilaced loithin his j^oicer hy the Constitution to 
protect Texas from all foreign invasion." On 
the following day the treaty was signed. 

Ten days elapsed ere the treaty was sub- 
mitted to the Senate. The reason of this, under 
the circumstances, very surprising delay was 
the wish of the Secretary to lay simultaneously 
before the Senate a copy of a letter, which was 
formally a reply to a dispatch of Lord Aberdeen, 
and addressed to Mr, Pakenham, the English 
plenipotentiary, but which, in fact, was a piece 
of special pleading in justification of annexation, 
di'ected to the people of the United States. A 
more remarkable and more revolting document 
has never been issued from the State Depart- 
ment of the country. 

In the dispatch of December 26, 1843, which 
had been communicated by Mr. Pakenham to 
Secretary Upshur on February 26, 1844, Lord 
Aberdeen had said : — 



TEXAS 231 

"We desire to see [slavery] abolished in Texas. 
With regard to the latter point, it must be and is 
well known, both to the United States and to the 
whole world, that Great Britain desires, and is con- 
stantly exerting herself to procure, the general aboli- 
tion of slavery throughout the world. . . . With re- 
gard to Texas, we avow that we wish to see slavery 
abolished there, as elsewhere, and we would rejoice 
if the recognition of that country by the Mexican 
government should be accompanied by an engage- 
ment on the part of Texas to abolish slavery eventu- 
ally, and under proper conditions, throughout the 
republic." 

Callioun declared In his letter of April 18, 
1844, to Mr. Pakenham, that these avowals 
o£ Great Britain had made it, in the opinion 
of the President, "the imperious duty of the 
Federal government " to conclude, " in self-de- 
fence," a treaty of annexation with Texas as 
the most effectual measure to defeat England's 
intention. 

"The United States have heretofore declined to 
meet her [Texas'] wishes ; but the time has now ar- 
rived when they can no longer refuse, consistently 
with their own security and peace, and the sacred 
obligation imposed by their constitutional compact 
for mutual defence and protection. . . . They are 
without responsibility for that state of things already 
adverted to as the immediate cause of imposing on 
them, in self-defence, the obligation of adopting the 



232 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

measures they have. They remained passive so long 
as the policy on the part of Great Britain, which 
has led to its adoption, had no immediate bearing on 
their peace and safety." 

It may not be correct to apply, without modi- 
fication, the code of private ethics to politics; 
but, however flexible political morality be, a lie 
is a lie, and Calhoun knew that there was not 
one particle of truth in these assertions. Al- 
most eight years before, on May 23, 1836, as 
we have seen, he himself had declared annexa- 
tion to be necessary, and the first and fore- 
most reason which he alleged for it was the 
interest which the Southern States had in it, 
on account of their peculiar institution. Two 
years later his colleague, Mr. Preston, had 
moved in the Senate, and Mr. Thompson, of 
South Carolina, had also moved in the House 
of Representatives, to declare annexation ex- 
pedient. Several state Legislatures, as those of 
Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, had agi- 
tated the question with hot zeal, unreservedly 
avowing that they did so " upon grounds some- 
what local in their complexion, but of an im- 
port infinitely grave and interesting to the peo- 
ple who inhabit the southern portion of this 
confederacy." In December, 1841, it was a pub- 
lic secret in the political circles of Washington 
that Tyler had again taken up the annexation 



TEXAS 233 

project. It had, in fact, never been abandoned, 
but only temporarily put off the order of the 
day, because, for various reasons, the time had 
not been deemed opportune. But on October 
16, 1843, more than two months before Lord 
Aberdeen's dispatch was written, and more than 
four months before it was delivered, Upshur 
had made the formal proposition of annexation. 
Whether Calhoun had any knowledge of the 
existence of this dispatch before he had con- 
sented to become the successor of Upshur we 
do not know ; but that he would have accepted 
Tyler's invitation, and entered upon the office 
with exactly the same programme, if Lord 
Aberdeen's dispatch had never been written, 
nobody has ever ventured to question. It is, 
therefore, an incontestable fact that there was 
not a particle of truth in those allegations of 
the Secretary, and that he was fully conscious 
of it. 

To pervert the truth in such a manner re- 
quired indeed a bold front. Even if the whole 
world had not been familiar with the fact that 
ever since the battle of San Jacinto the annex- 
ation of Texas had been but a question of time 
with the whole South and the Democratic party, 
Calhoun's assertion would have been simply 
ridiculous. Lord Aberdeen's dispatch contained 
absolutely nothing to startle or even to siu'prise 



234 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the United States. The avowals which, accord- 
ing to Calhoun, the President regarded with 
such " deep concern," only stated a fact as no- 
torious as the existence of slavery itself. That 
England's hostility to slavery and her desire to 
see it evei-ywhere abolished was "for the first 
time " avowed " to this government " was evi- 
dently of no consequence whatever, for it did 
not add a grain's weight to the importance of 
the fact. Lord Aberdeen expressly declared 
that England's policy remained unaltered, and 
Calhoun did not pretend to doubt in the least 
the truth of this assurance. The mere fact 
that England had seen fit to state, in an official 
dispatch, what every schoolboy already knew 
to be the case could not be a cause of alarm, 
and the reason which had induced her to do it 
was calculated to have exactly the opposite ef- 
fect. Lord Aberdeen had not indulged in any 
threats, but the only purpose of his dispatch was 
to dispel any apprehensions which the United 
States could possibly entertain. He said : — 

" We should rejoice if the recognition of that coun- 
try by the Mexican government should be accompa- 
nied by an engagement on the pai't of Texas to abol- 
ish slavery eventually, and under proper conditions 
tln-oughout the republic. But although we earnestly 
tlesive and feel it to be our duty to promote such a 
consummation, we shall not interfere unduly, or with 



TEXAS 235 

an improper assumption of authority, with either 
party, in order to assure the adoption of such a course. 
We shall counsel, but we shall not seek to compel or 
unduly control, either party. . . . She [Great Brit- 
ain] has no thought or intention of seeking to act di- 
rectly or indirectly, in a political sense, on the United 
States, through Texas. . . . The governments of the 
slave-holding States may be assured that, although we 
shall not desist from those open and honest efforts 
which we have constantly made for procui-ing the 
abolition of slavery throughout the world, we shall 
neither openly nor secretly resort to any measures 
which can tend to disturb their internal tranquillity, 
or thereby to affect the prosperity of the American 
Union." 

It did not require the keen intellect of a Cal- 
houn to see that these emphatic disclaimers 
were meant to be the essential part of Lord 
Aberdeen's dispatch, and not the sentences on 
which he based his reply to Mr. Pakenham. 
Yet it would be a great mistake to suppose that 
they only served him as a pretext, because he 
could find no better one, and that his uneasiness 
on account of England's policy was feigned. 
His alarm was not only most real, but it was 
also fully justified. In the course of the nego- 
tiations with Texas, Upshur had repeatedly 
avowed that the alleged ambitious designs of 
Great Britain, and especially her exertions for 



236 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the abolition of slavery in the rej^ublic, irapera^ 
tively demanded that the annexation should no 
longer be delayed. At the same time, however, 
it was acknowledged on all sides that slavery 
was doomed in Texas, independently of any- 
thing England might do. Leading Texans — ■ 
e. g. Ex-President Mirabeau B. Lamar — had 
frequently declared that the anti-slavery party 
would soon acquire the ascendency, and that the 
abolition of slavery could be effected " without 
the slightest inconvenienae." The most zealous 
advocates of annexation in Congress had em- 
phatically indorsed this opinion, and Upshur 
himself had written to Mr. Murphy, " If Texas 
should not be attached to the United States, she 
cannot maintain that institution [slavery] ten 
years, and probably not half that time." Cal- 
houn held the same opinion. He informed Mr. 
Pakenham that the President had " the settled 
conviction that it would be difficult for Texas, 
in her actual condition, to resist what she [Great 
Britain] desires, icitliout si/pposing the influence 
and exertions of Great Britain would he ex- 
tended beyond the limits assigned hy Lord Aber- 
deen ; " and he added, " and this, if Texas could 
not resist the consummation of the object of her 
desire, would endanger both the safety and pro- 
sperity of the Union." 

An independent Texas without slavery and 



TEXAS 237 

the permanent continuance of slavery in the 
Union were, however, irreconcihible. Even if 
this had been a mistake, as it undoubtedly was 
not, the oj^ponents of the slavocracy had no rea- 
son to contest the truth of this confession, for 
it was the most destructive judgment which 
could be passed on slavery. The slavocracy de- 
clared through its most gifted representative, in 
an official document, that between it and liberty 
there existed a conflict of principle so irrecon- 
cilable, that by the simple fact of the neighbor- 
hood of independent States in which slavery did 
not exist, it was brought face to face with the 
question of life or death. Did it not follow 
directly from this that its political connection 
with free States was possible only on the suppo- 
sition of the complete subservience of the latter ? 
Was there a more forcible proof needed, or even 
possible, than the very demand which the sla- 
vocracy now made, in consequence of that fact ? 
Because the slave-holding States thought their 
peculiar institution endangered by the existence 
of an independent free State, it was declared to 
be the " imperative duty " and a " sacred obliga- 
tion " of the United States, imposed by their 
constitutional compact, to absorb that State into 
the Union, in order to prevent the abolition of 
slavery in it. It was not only a fact that Texas 
was to be annexed to make the continued exist- 



238 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ence of slavery possible there, but the fact was 
officially declared before the whole world by the 
executive of the Union. The democratic repub- 
lic, which had based its existence upon the rights 
of man, was morally and constitutionally bound 
to prevent the breaking of the chains of the 
slave in a neighboring republic, though it could 
be done only by adding these very chains to 
those which already bound its arms. Calhoun's 
letter to Pakenham was the official proclamation 
of the " nationalization " of slavery, only, how- 
ever, so far as it imposed duties upon the Union, 
but by no mean's with regard to any correspond- 
ing rights. " With us," the Secretary declared, 
the policy to be adopted in reference to the Afri- 
can race " is a question to be decided not by the 
Federal government, but by each member of this 
Union, for itself, according to its own views of 
its domestic policy, and without any right on 
the part of the Federal government to interfere 
in any manner whatever. Its rights and duties 
are limited to protecting, under the guarantees 
of the Constitution, each member of this Union 
in whatever policy it may adopt in reference to 
the portion within its respective limits." The 
slave-holding States had to say what was neces^ 
sary to protect them in the policy they had been 
pleased to adopt, and the Federal government 
had to act accordingly. The President had had 



TEXAS 239 

no choice. The annexation of Texas was " the 
most effectual, if not the only means of guard- 
ing against the threatened danger," and there- 
fore he had acted simply " in obedience " to the 
constitutional obligation of the Union. In other 
words, it was the constitutional obligation of the 
Union to engage in slavery propagandism in the 
defence of the interests of the slavocracy, and, 
confessedly, even at the risk of a war ; for the 
Secretary declared, in an official dispatch to 
the American representative in Mexico, that the 
step had been taken " in full view of all possible 
consequences." 

If the United States had indeed assumed such 
sacred obligations towards the slave-holders, in 
establishing the Constitution, there could be no 
impropriety in it that Calhoun concluded his 
letter with a short but enthusiastic exposition 
of his theory of the " positive good." But what 
were those to think of it who did not acknow- 
ledge those obligations? Surely, the history 
of the United States had entered upon a new 
jjhase, if the Secretary of State could dare, in 
an official communication and in the name of 
the Federal Executive, to lecture a foreign state 
upon the blessings of slavery. And by his own 
testimony he stands convicted of having en- 
gaged in this whole correspondence partly for 
the very purpose of doing that, and of having 



240 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

been grievously disappointed that tlie rejection 
of the treaty prevented him from enlarging 
upon this exalted theme. The " Charleston 
Mercury" of November 28, 1860, published a 
previously unknown letter, dated July 2, 1844, 
in which Calhoun says : — 

" If an opportunity should offer, I had hoped to 
draw out a full correspondence by my letters to Mr. 
Pakenham. They were, in part, written with that 
view, and were intended to lay the foundation of a 
long and full correspondence ; and I doubt not what 
was intended would have been accomplished, had the 
Senate done its duty [I] and ratified the treaty. Their 
neglect to do so, I fear, will not only lose Texas to 
the Union, but also defeat my aim in reference to 
the corres])ondence. Had the treaty been ratified, 
my last letter to Mr. Pakenham, which he trans- 
mitted to his government, would not have been left 
without a reply, which would have brought on what 
I intended. As it is, it will not be answered, as I 
infer from Mr. Pakenham's conversation recently. 
His government is content to leave to our Senate 
the defence of its course, and is too wise, when it can 
be avoided, to carry on a correspondence in which 
they see they have little to gaiu. I regret it. It 
will, I fear, be difficult to get another opportunity to 
bring out our cause fully and favorably before tlie 
world. I shall omit none which may afford a decent 
pretext for renewing the correspondence." 

Even ultra-Democratic papers and journals 



TEXAS 241 

in the North criticised the Pakenham letter in 
the severest terms. The " Democratic Review," 
though it advocated immediate annexation, and 
professed " exalted admiration, respect, and 
even attachment " for Calhoun, complained 
with bitterness that the President and his 
Secretary had not left a shred of the Southern 
doctrine, which was also that of the Northern 
Democrats, that slavery was a local institution, 
" with which the free States had nothing- to do, 
for which they were in no wise responsible." 
It rejiroved with indignation the " volunteer 
discussion of the essential merits of this pecu- 
liar local institution through the peculiar organ 
of our collective nationality, for which, if for 
anything, the Union, and the whole Union, is 
emphatically responsible." Without reserve, it 
avowed that Calhoun had " nationalized " and 
" federalized " slavery, " actually pledging the 
military intervention of the country, by a simple 
unconstitutional executive promise, to plunge 
dii'ectly into war with Mexico if she should 
execute her threat of immediate invasion of 
Texas ; " and all this " on the avowed ground, the 
almost exclusively avowed ground, of strength- 
ening and preserving the institution of slavery." 
Such language from a leading organ of their 
own party might well have induced the Presi- 
dent and his Secretary to pause and ponder. 



242 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Even if tliey succeeded, they were evidently 
playing a dangerous game. The deep-seated 
dissatisfaction in their own camp indicated that 
it would probably not be ended by their winning 
the stakes, and the sequel might be very far 
from corresponding with the beginning. But 
Calhoun, who so justly boasted of being wont to 
look to the farthest consequences of every ques- 
tion, had now neither ears nor eyes for anything 
except his immediate object. It is asserted that 
he obtained from Archer, of Virginia, the chair- 
man of the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
the solemn promise that he would delay the 
Senate forty days with regard to the annexation 
treaty. The alleged reason for this wish was 
that Mexico's answer to the notification of the 
treaty was expected by the last day of that 
term. That was unquestionably an empty pre- 
tence, for in various ways this time might have 
easily been shortened a little; and, besides, it 
had been declared from the first that Mexico 
would not be allowed to interfere in any way 
whatever in this question. The term was evi- 
dently fixed with relation to the national con- 
vention of the Democratic party, which was to 
meet two days earlier at Baltimore. Calhoun 
wanted to make sure of the party with regard 
to the main question, ere he allowed the Senate 
to come to a decision on the treaty. The " Spec- 



TEXAS 243 

tator," the reputed organ of Calhoun in Wash- 
ington, had formally declared that Van Buren 
was to be considered " as beside the presidential 
canvass," because he had refused to pledge 
himself for immediate annexation. Therewith 
the programme was announced which the an- 
nexationists were resolved to impose upon the 
convention at all hazards. After a long and 
arduous struggle over the preliminary questions, 
they triumphed completely. The majority vote 
which Van Buren received at the first ballot 
was a bootless compliment. His partisans knew 
that they had lost the game before the voting 
commenced. On the eighth ballot the name 
of Governor Polk, of Tennessee, appeared for 
the first time, and on the next ballot he was 
nominated. Polk was what, in the political 
slang of to-day, is called " a dark horse ; " but 
as to the test question, he coidd have been im- 
plicitly trusted, even if the platform had not 
pledged the party to " the re-annexation of 
Texas at the earliest practicable period." 

The impatience which Calhoun had betrayed 
in the first stages of his annexation campaign 
proved that he would have manoeuvred with 
more quickness and boldness if he had not had 
good reason to apprehend that the Senate wotdd 
take serious objection to his policy. It was well 
known that the treaty would not be supported 



244 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

by all those who were in favor of speedy annex- 
ation. The Pakenliam correspondence was a 
two-edo-ed sword. Calhoun had cut himself as 
badly as he had cut his opponents. He had 
succeeded in consolidating the South to the ex- 
tent that he had expected ; but, at the same 
time, he had aroused the feeling of the North 
to such a degree that even the best disposed 
senators were afraid that they would commit 
political suicide by voting for this treaty, after 
it had been officially based on such grounds. 
Besides, they did not see why such immoderate 
haste should be necessary. Tyler's and Cal- 
houn's interests might be well enough served 
by it, but that was only another reason for them 
to curb the over-zealous administration. While 
there were but few, if any, senators who, under 
any circumstances, would have been anxious to 
smooth the way of either the President or the 
Secretary in the pursuit of any personal ends, 
the majority deemed it a duty to administer to 
them a severe rebuke for their gross infringe- 
ments upon the rights of Congress and the lack 
of consideration for the Senate, which had char- 
acterized the whole transaction. Even zealous 
annexationists indulged in searching and caus- 
tic criticisms of the ti-eaty and all the attendant 
circumstances, and on June 8 it was rejected by 
a vote of thirty-five against sixteen. 



TEXAS 245 

The dismay of Tyler and Calhoun was great, 
but they were not in the least daunted. They 
were bent upon attaining- their end. If it was 
not to be secured in this way, nothing was to 
deter them from trying any other which pro- 
mised success, though they might have to ride 
rough-shod over the Constitution and all the 
constitutional doctrines which they had hereto- 
fore professed. On the second day after the 
rejection of the treaty, the President sent a mes- 
sage to the House of Representatives, accompa- 
nied by all the documents relating to the ques- 
tion. The essence of the message was contained 
in the declaration that Congress was " fully 
competent, in some other form of proceeding, 
to accomplish everything that a formal ratifi- 
cation of the treaty could have accomplished." 
That was in fact an appeal from the Senate, 
which had the unquestionable right to reject 
a treaty, to the House of Representatives, to 
v^^hich no power has been given by the Consti- 
tution in relation to treaties. What was the 
sense of rendering the consent of two thirds of 
the Senate indispensable for the conclixsion of 
every treaty, if, after a treaty had been rejected 
by the Senate, a simple majority of both Houses 
of Congress had the right virtually to ratify 
it, by accomplishing in some other form what 
the treaty was to have accomplished ? Like a 



2i6 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

French cavalier of the old regime, Tyler waived 
away this question with the bold reply, " The 
great question is, not as to the manner in which 
it shall be done, but whether it shall be accom- 
plished or not." That such an answer would 
not have been given, unless it was fully ap- 
proved by Calhoun, will not be doubted. But 
when had the most reckless Federalists ever 
dared to profess such an unblushing latitudina- 
rianism, or to nationalize the Union to such an 
extent by pushing the Constitution aside, and 
giving the Federal government carte blanche in 
a question more important than any other ever 
submitted to it ? Verily, the country had fallen 
upon strange times, if such a doctrine could be 
officially proclaimed by the President, under the 
sanction of the man who had come very near 
plunging the Union into a civil war, by pushing 
his states-rights theory to such exti-emities that 
he found, in the right of nullification, the main- 
stay of the Union and its great conservative 
principle. 

The President had made no definite proposi- 
tion to Congress, but the language of the mes- 
sage of June 10 was too plain to admit any 
doulit that the administration would not let 
matters quietly take their own course after the 
close of the session. The check which it had 
received had made it only more determined and 



TEXAS 247 

boltlero Upon a notification from the Texan 
Secretary of State that Mexico intended a new 
invasion, Calhoun stated that his letter of April 
11 had. promised armed intervention only in 
case this emergency should occur while the 
treaty of annexation was pending*. We have 
seen how loath he had been to give this promise, 
which his immediate predecessor, Nelson, had 
declared unconstitutional, and yet he now, Sep- 
tember 10, after the treaty had been rejected, 
volunteered to extend the obligation to the whole 
time during which " the question of annexa- 
tion " should remain "pending." In a formal 
and constitutional sense, however, annexation 
was not now at all a pending question. That 
the President had expressed the wish to see it 
ultimately accomplished, no matter in what 
way, and that some members of Congress had 
suggested this and that, did not and could not 
make it a question in this sense. The treaty 
had been rejected, the Executive had not en- 
tered upon new negotiations with Texas for an- 
other treaty, and Congress was not even in ses- 
sion. The annexation of Texas was, therefore, 
no more a " pending question " than the tariff, 
the bank, or any other political problem in 
which the people took a lively interest. There 
was absolutely nothing to be found in the ac- 
tual condition of things from which even the 



248 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

most subtle dialectics could deduce any interna, 
tional rights or obligations. Besides, the Sen- 
ate had given it to be understood, in no very 
ambiguous manner, that, at least in what con- 
cerned the President's independent initiative, 
It did not approve of the promises made in the 
letter of April 11. Calhoun, therefore, forbore 
to announce, in express words, an armed inter- 
vention ; but the declaration that the United 
States would feel themselves " higlily offended " 
by a renewal of the war, and that they would 
not " permit it," virtually amounted to the same 
thinir. When the news came that Mexican 
agents were agitating the Indians at the fron- 
tier, — news which never failed to reach Wash- 
ington, whenever it was opportune that it 
should come, — Calhoun followed up his protest 
of September 10 by authorizing (Sej^tember 17) 
the Union troops to enter Texas as soon as the 
Texans should desire it. 

In their hot pursuit of the long-coveted prize, 
which had so unexpectedly slipped through their 
fingers, Tyler and Calhoun were, in fact, as 
ready " to assume the full responsibility " for 
any step which promised to bring them nearer 
the goal as Andrew Jackson had ever been 
when the constitutionality or legality of his acts 
was called into question. Perhaps they would 
have proceeded with a little more caution, if the 



TEXAS 249 

Southern annexationists had not set them the 
example of an mibhishing recklessness, which 
was without a parallel in the whole history of 
the Union. The threats of disunion, if the 
North dared to resist this extension of the do- 
main of slavery, were too common to make the 
desired impression. Much more effect had the 
announcement that the North would have to 
choose between Texas and the abolition of the 
tariff of 1842. There were many respectable 
men in the North who honestly believed slavery 
to be a sin and a curse, but who loved their 
pockets more than they hated slavery. With 
others, again, their party attachment was 
stronger than their hatred and fear of slavery. 
They benumbed their consciences with the illu- 
sion that they could cleanse their skirts of all 
responsibility by protesting against the annex- 
ation and recommending the election of anti-an- 
nexationists to Congress, while they voted for 
Poy?. As to the office-seekers, a slight raising 
of the party whip was, of course, sufficient to 
make them all zealous annexationists, no matter 
what their convictions had been before the Bal- 
timore Convention ; their convictions had to be 
stored away for the time being, for it would 
have been foolhardiness to carry such heavy bag- 
gage in so hot a race, with so many competitors. 
So the annexationists could count upon the 



250 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

whole Democratic party of the North, though 
a considerable part of it either entirely disap- 
proved of annexation, or, at least, thought im- 
mediate annexation inexpedient. Yet, in spite 
of that and of their complete control over the 
Federal patronage, tlie annexationists would have 
lost the election, if the Liberty Party, instead 
of putting wp a candidate of their own, had sup- 
ported the Whigs, in order to bar the way to 
the former. The votes of that party caused 
the Whigs to lose the States of New York and 
Michigan, and with them the election. Polk 
was elected, but the history of the election 
proved beyond contradiction that the majority 
of the people were opposed to immediate annex- 
ation. Tyler's annual message of December 3, 
however, not only asserted the contrai'y, but de- 
clared that both Houses of Congress had been 
instructed, — by "a controlling majority of the 
people, and a large majority of the States," — 
" in terms the most emphatic," to accomplish 
annexation immediately, and he therefore recom- 
mended it to be done in the most simple way, 
namely, by joint resolution. 

How often had the holy anger of Calhoun's 
constitutional and political conscience been 
aroused by Jackson's daring to put such inter- 
pretations upon elections ! Yet everything with 
which Jackson could be justly I'eproached in 



TEXAS 251 

this respect was mere child's play, in comparir 
son with the monstrosity of the political heresy 
of this assertion and with its brazen disregard 
of truth ; and that Tyler neither would nor 
could have ventured to make it without Cal- 
houn's consent nobody will contest. It was 
simply not true that the election had pre- 
sented to the people for its decision " the iso- 
lated question of annexation." If it had been 
true, the result could, perhaps, by means of 
Benton's " demos Icrateo " principle, have been 
tortured into an instruction " to both branches 
of Congress, by their respective constituents ; " 
but neither the most searching chemical ana- 
lysis nor the most powerful microscope could 
discover the slightest vestige of this " demos 
krateo principle " in the Constitution. Besides, 
the theory of the message refuted itself in such 
a way that not another word is needed to show 
it up as a political counterfeit of the most 
bungling kind. If the electoral votes of the 
several States were binding instructions to the 
respective senators, the eleven States which had 
voted for Clay had instructed their senators, 
" in terms the most emphatic," against annexa- 
tion. The Union, however, consisted at the 
time of but twenty-six States, and the least im- 
portant of treaties required the assent of two 
thirds of the senators. Thus the " instruc- 



252 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tions " wliicli the senators had received from 
the " States " made it impossible to accomplish 
annexation in the way which Tyler himself had 
acknowledged to be at least " the most suitable." 
Yet the " instructions " from a simple majority 
of States would, by the theory advanced, have 
made it the imperative duty of the Senate to 
conclude, without any further previous consid- 
eration, a compact with a foreign power, than 
which it is impossible to imagine one more im- 
portant. If the " people," by means of a presi- 
dential election, could oblige Congress to in- 
corporate a foreign state, and if Congress coidd 
effect such incorporation by a simple majority 
resolution, the " consolidation " of the Union 
was complete, and its confederate character was 
completely and forever lost. The theory of the 
message was, in fact, the subversion of all the 
underlying principles of Calhoun's political doc- 
trines, upon which he had based his defence of 
the " peculiar institution." In spite of that, 
however, he consented to this theory without 
any compunction, because the slavocracy would 
have to die, and to die beyond resurrection, if it 
could not get more land and create more slave- 
holding States. 

Congress did not accede to the proposition of 
the President without a little more ado. The 
House of Representatives, indeed, was satisfied 



TEXAS 253 

with having the line of the Missouri Compro- 
mise continued through Texas ; but, in the Sen- 
ate, a back door had to be provided for the con- 
sciences of those annexationists who held that 
the only constitutional way of effecting the an- 
nexation was by treaty. The resolution of the 
Plouse of Representatives was amended, by au- 
thorizing the President to negotiate another 
treaty of annexation, if he shoidd deem it more 
advisable to do so than to submit the joint reso- 
lution to Texas. Benton and the other sena- 
tors, who had sustained the above-mentioned 
constitutional view, never deigned to inform the 
people whence they derived the right to give 
the President the choice to bring about the an- 
nexation, either in the constitutional or in an 
lanconstitutional way, as he should think best. 
The crutch with which they limped over this 
obstacle was McDuffte's declaration that Cal- 
houn would not have the " audacity " to choose 
the unconstitutional way, and submit the joint 
resolution to Texas. Did they really so little 
know the man who had dared to become " an 
honest nullifier " ? On March 1, 1845, the joint 
resolution was approved by the President. On 
Calhoun's advice " to act without delay," the 
Cabinet were summoned the next day, and con- 
curred in the opinion of the Secretary of State, 
who wrote his dispatch, inviting Texas to aof 



254 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

cept the terms of the joint resolution, the same 
night, and sent it off " late in the evening of 
March 3," a few hours before the expiration of 
Tyler's term of office. His reasons for acting 
thus he has repeatedly stated with a candor 
which proves that he would have been equal to 
a much greater " audacity," if it had been ne- 
cessary to secure his object. In the dispatch to 
Mr. Donelson he wrote, " But the decisive ob- 
jection to the amendment of the Senate is that 
it would endanger the ultimate success of the 
measure. ... A treaty . . . must be submitted 
to the Senate for its approval, and run the haz- 
ard of receiving the votes of two thirds of the 
members present ; which could hardly be ex- 
pected, if we are to judge from recent experi- 
ence." And on February 24, 1847, he declared 
in the Senate, " I selected the resolution of the 
House in preference to the amendment of which 
the senator from Missouri was the author, . . . 
because I clearly saw, not only that it was 
every way preferable, but the only certain mode 
by which annexation could be effected. . . . 
That the course I adopted did secure the annex- 
ation, and that it was indispensable for that pur- 
pose, I have high authority in my possession." 

Thus it was that he triumphed over all ob- 
stacles, and succeeded in virtually accomplish- 
ing the purpose for which he had consented to 



TEXAS 265 

become a member of Tyler's Cabinet. What 
right had he to complain that the work was 
continued by his successors in the spirit in 
which it had been begun by him ? Why should 
Polk's diplomatic conscience be more conform- 
able to the code of private morals than his 
own ? In order to get Texas, he, the sternest 
and most jealous partisan of strict construction, 
had loosened the bridle of the Constitution more 
than any of his predecessors had ever dared to 
do. What right had he to cry out and wash 
his hands of all responsibility, when his disci- 
ples refused to listen to his warning voice, and 
rushed on in mad zeal along the track upon 
which he had started them ? He had hit the 
mark, but the ball pierced the target and con- 
tinued its fatal flight. 

Calhoun's friends expected that he would be 
called upon to finish the great work which he 
had directed with so much skill and energy, 
and it is asserted that he shared their opinion. 
We cannot prove the contrary, but are inclined 
to think that he judged Polk more correctly. 
If he really expected to remain at the head of 
the Cabinet, the wish was father to the thought. 
Polk certainly never intended to tender him the 
office. Now, after the annexation of Texas was 
as good as accomplished, the whole party would 
probably have been rather dissatisfied to see the 



256 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

first place awarded to the leader of the small 
faction on its extreme left wing, which was so 
easily tempted to break through the bonds of 
party discipline and assume an independent 
position. Especially Jackson would have been 
deeply mortified, and Polk, who would never 
have reached the top of the ladder if he had not 
clung so faithfully to the heels of the general, 
was not inclined to array Jackson's still enor- 
mous influence against the administration. Be- 
sides, it was asserted that the offended politi- 
cians of New York had exacted the promise that, 
in consideration of their supporting the nominees 
of the Baltimore Convention, Calhoun should be 
discarded. But, above all, Polk was personally 
not at all desirous to put a political star of 
this magnitude and brilliancy in too close prox- 
imity with the rushlight of his own talents and 
achievements. Calhoun's character and whole 
political course absolutely forbade his honest 
subordination under another man's mind and 
will, and Polk was too ambitious and self-con- 
scious to be a mere figure-head where it was his 
right and even his duty to be the real chieJ. 
On the other hand, he was well aware that 
openly to slight the Calhounites in the person 
of their leader would be the extreme of folly. 
He therefore offered him the first diplomatic 
office, the legation at the Court of St. James, 



TEXAS 257 

undoubtedly fully satisfied that the houor would 
be politely declined. 

Many years before, at the end of 1819, when 
Mr. Gallatin had expressed the wish to be re- 
called from Paris, Adams had asked Calhoun 
whether he would accept the post. Callioun had 
then answered " that he was well aware that a 
long and familiar practical acquaintance with 
Europe was indispensable to complete the edu- 
cation of an American statesman, and regretted 
that his fortune would not bear the cost of it." 
Calhoun devoted much time to the manage- 
ment of his estate, and he had the reputation 
of being an uncommonly experienced and effi- 
cient planter ; but his pecuniary circumstances 
remained modest, though he lived with his nu- 
merous family in unostentatious but solid com- 
fort, and could indulge in the true luxury of 
always bidding a hearty welcome to the throngs 
of friends who came to enjoy the hospitality of 
his table and the pleasure of his genial com- 
pany. It is, therefore, very possible that he 
would have declined, under all circumstances, 
Polk's offer, for the same reason which had dic- 
tated his answer to the overtures of Adams. But 
it is unquestionable that he would have taken 
the same course for political reasons, if he had 
been the wealthiest man on the continent. Polk 
knew i^erfectly well that he paid Calhoun an 



258 JOHN C, CALHOUN 

empty compliment, for it was certain that his 
croino- to London in such critical times would 
be considered by himself and by his political 
friends a kind of desertion. It was too late in 
the day to go to Europe in order to finish his 
education as a statesman. If he now accepted 
a diplomatic post, it could only be for one of 
two reasons : either because he wanted to grat- 
ify his ambition and vanity, or because he 
thought that he could render his country im- 
portant services. This kind of ambition, how- 
ever, though its fire had not entirely ceased 
to burn in his bosom, was no longer strong 
enough to determine his resolution in a question 
of such moment ; and though it might soon be- 
come of great consequence who was the repre- 
sentative of the United States in London, yet 
he could evidently do much more to avert any 
dangers which might possibly arise if he should 
stay in his old place in the Senate, where he 
was not obliged to follow the instructions of 
other people, but was entirely free to be guided 
by his own opinion. His character and the 
peculiar part which he had played these last 
fifteen years in the history of the Union abso- 
lutely forbade his being an instrument in other 
men's hands ; either he had to direct the policy 
of the Union, so far as that could be done by 
the Executive, or he had to remain the inde- 



TEXAS 259 

pendent senator, the foremost champion of the 
slavocracy and the leader of the ultra states- 
rights faction. The former he could not do, 
and weighty reasons demanded that he should 
once more return to the post which he had oc- 
cupied so long with so much distinction. Un- 
hesitatingly he had thrown his influence into 
the scales for Polk, because he had only to 
choose between him and Clay ; but the late Gov- 
ernor of Tennessee and Speaker of the House 
of Representatives would not have been his own 
first choice, and he was far from being satisfied 
that either the foreign or domestic policy of the 
new President would entirely accord with his 
own views. The wild denimciations in which 
the radicals of South Carolina had indulged 
during the campaign had been disapproved by 
him, but he thought it wise not only to wait, 
but also to watch. He therefore readily re- 
turned to his seat in the Senate, which was 
vacated by his successor as a matter of course. 
His position in his State was such that he might 
consider the seat as belonging to him of right, 
so long as he was willing to remain in public 
life. 



CHAPTER IX 

OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 

When Calhoun was invited to become the 
head of Tyler's Cabinet, the " Richmond En- 
quirer " said, " We cannot entertain a mo- 
ment's doubt that he has been selected with a 
special regard to the question of Oregon and the 
annexation of Texas." The order of the two 
matters ought to have been reversed, but it 
was correct that, next to Texas, Oregon was the 
most important subject in the order of the day, 
and that it required a master's hand to bring 
the negotiations with England to a mutually 
satisfactory termination. Yet it is very un- 
likelj^ that Calhoun himself harbored the delu- 
sion that he would add a new laurel leaf to his 
wreath by accomplishing that task. Everything 
that could be said in support of the claims of 
the United States he counted up with his cus- 
tomary ability, but he had no new fact and no 
new argument to add to what had been repeated 
already a dozen times. He, therefore, made no 
more impression upon Pakenham than Paken- 
ham made upon him by reiterating for the 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 2G1 

tenth time what England had to say in sup- 
port of her claims. In this way it was evidently 
impossible to advance a single inch on either 
side. The two powers could go on telling their 
respective stories to the end of days, and the 
only result of it would be the heaping of proof 
upon proof that nothing could be thus attained. 
The journals of the discoverers and the legal 
arguments were certainly of some weight, and 
an impartial examination of them undoubtedly 
leads to the conclusion that of the two incom- 
plete and contestable titles that of the United 
States was the better. But no log-books and 
no principles of public and international law, as 
laid down by Hugo Grotius, could avail any- 
thing against the simple fact that, by a solemn 
Jtnd repeatedly renewed agreement, the Terri- 
tory was held in joint occupancy by the two pow- 
ers, and that the possession of it was deemed 
ty both an interest of such moment that neither 
would ever voluntarily yield the whole ground 
to the other. As neither wished to continue 
the status quo, and still less to cut the knot 
with the sword, a compromise was the only way 
to settle the controversy. Great Britain there- 
fore proposed to submit it to an arbitrator ; but 
on January 21, 1845, Calhoun, in the name of 
the President, declined this offer, upon the 
ground that " it would be unadvisable to enter- 



262 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

tain a proposal to resort to any other mode, so 
long as there is hojDe of arriving at a satisfac- 
tory settlement by negotiation." 

There the matter was allowed to rest for the 
time. Tyler and Calhoun left it to their suc- 
cessors exactly as they had found it. Yet it is 
to be supposed that Calhoun was tolerably w'ell 
satisfied, and thought that he had done the best 
thing possible, ixnder the circumstances, for the 
interest of the United States. In the beoinnins: 
of 1843 a bill for the occupation and settle- 
ment of the Oregon Territory had been before 
Congress. Calhoun opposed its passage, be- 
cause he thought that the United States had no 
right, under the convention of 1818-27, to offer 
land bounties to settlers. With many others, 
he apprehended that this might lead to a breach 
with England, and he deprecated it as the great- 
est folly on the part of the United States to do 
anything tending to provoke a decision by ar- 
bitrament of arms. In six weeks England could 
bring a strong naval aiid military force from 
China to the mouth of the Columbia River, 
while the American fleet, which would have to 
double Cape Horn, would need about six months 
to reach that jjoint ; and the overland march 
from Missouri would require at least one hun- 
dred and twenty days, if indeed it were jDossible 
to sustain any considerable force in a region so 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 263 

destitute of sui:)pHes. The United States would, 
therefore, surely be worsted in a conflict of 
arms for the dominion over that distant coun- 
try. On the other hand, the almost miraculous 
growth of the population of the United States 
and the impetus with which it was " rolling to- 
wards the shores of the Pacific " rendered it 
an absolute certainty that, in a comparatively 
short time, the United States would be as much 
stronger in Oregon than England as England 
was now stronger than they. Therefore Cal- 
houn's advice was, " Let us be wise and abide 
our time ; it will accomjDlish all that we desire 
with more certainty and with infinitely less sac- 
rifice than we can without it." " All we want, 
to effect our object in this case, is ' a wise and 
masterly inactivity.' " 

Calhoun had now acted in strict conformity to 
this programme, and, as a settlement of the con- 
troversy according to the wishes of the United 
States was as yet impossible, it is to be pre- 
sumed that he was not exactly dissatisfied that 
the negotiation had had no result except to add 
another bundle of useless papers to the arcliives 
of the State Department. 

President Polk's inaugural address made a 
sharp cut through this policy of " wise and 
masterly inactivity " by declaring the title of 
the United States to the Territory " clear and 



264 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

unquestionable." The whole country was thrown 
into wild excitement by this declaration, for if 
Congress took the same view of the question 
the breach with England seemed almost in- 
evitable. That the President, in spite of his 
" blustering announcement," as Lord John Kus- 
sell called that declaration, addressed a com- 
promise proposition to England was a surprise ; 
but the chances of an amicable settlement were 
not thereby increased, for in one of the earlier 
negotiations the United States had been will- 
in"' to yield more than what was now offered 
by Polk. Since England had then rejected 
the greater concession as insufficient, it was a 
matter of course that she would not now accept 
the smaller offer. Besides, Polk had accom- 
panied it with the declaration that " he would 
not have consented to yield any portion of the 
Oregon Territory had he not found himself 
embarrassed, if not committed, by the acts of his 
predecessors." He therefore withdrew his offer 
after it had been rejected by England, and his 
annual message declared " that no compromise 
whicli the United States ought to accept can be 
effected." At the same time he advised the 
abroo-ation of the convention of 1818-27. The 
consequence was that, as Calhoun afterwards 
stated, " stocks of every description fell, marine 
insurances rose, commercial pursuits were sus- 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 265 

pended, and our vessels remained inactive at the 
wharves." General Cass, after previous consul- 
tation with the President and Secretary of State, 
poured oil into the flames by a violent speech 
(December 15, 1845), which culminated in the 
assertion that " war is almost upon us." Several 
senators expressed in strong terms their dis- 
satisfaction with the course which the influen- 
tial senator from Michigan had seen fit to pur- 
sue. It seemed, however, as if the majority of 
both Houses of Congress would only too will- 
ingly follow the lead of the administration. 
On December 18, Senator Allen, the chairman 
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, moved 
a joint resolution, advising the President "to 
give, forthwith, notice to Great Britain that 
the government of the United States . . . will 
terminate the convention existing relative to 
the joint occupancy of the Oregon Territory." 
And on January 5, 1846, the Committee on 
Foreign Relations of the House moved a reso- 
lution, peremptorily demanding " that the Pre- 
sident of the United States forthwith cause no- 
tice to be given to the government of Great 
Britain," etc. 

The right to give notice at any time they 
pleased had been expressly stipidated by the 
high contracting powers in the convention of 
1827. The adoption of those resolutions, there- 



266 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

fore, would not have given Great Britain any 
just cause of complaint. The spirit, however, 
wliich actuated the hotspurs made the words 
almost equivalent to a declaration of war. The 
notice that the United States wanted the joint 
occupancy to terminate was understood to be 
a notification that Great Britain must abandon 
her claims at once and absolutely, or take the 
consequences. " Fifty-four forty or fight " wass 
the plain language of the radicals. A set of 
resolutions, introduced by Senator Hannegan, 
boldly denied even the power of the govern- 
ment to settle the controversy by any compro- 
mise or to concede one foot of the Territory to 
England. Calhoun, on December 30, 1845, in- 
troduced a set of counter-resolutions, asserting 
the power of the government which Hannegan 
denied ; stating the fact that, however clear the 
title of the United States to the whole Territory 
might be in their opinion, there were conflict- 
ing claims to the possession of the same be- 
tween them and Great Britain ; and declaring 
that the President, in proposing the forty-ninth 
degree as a compromise boundary, did not 
" abandon the honor, the character, or the best 
interests of the American people." 

These counter-resolutions rolled a heavy load 
from the breasts of all those in whose opinion 
it was a criminal folly to treat this question in 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 267 

a manner which, if it was not intended to pro- 
voke a war, actually pressed the British lion 
to the alternative of crouching like a whipped 
Spaniel, oi*of using his powerful claws. It was 
generally believed that it depended upon Cal- 
houn whether passion and ambition or cool 
statesmanship should rule the day, and though 
the resolutions were clad in a strictly negative 
form they left no doubt which side could count 
upon his determined support. 

To-day, probably, nobody will contest that 
this is one of his best claims upon the gratitude 
of his country, and yet it cannot be denied that 
there was a good deal of solid matter in the 
avalanche of bitter complaints and stinging re- 
proaches which the Northwestern radicals hurled 
against him and all the Democrats of the South. 
Calhoun had carefully abstained fioni laying 
down any positive programme in his resolu- 
tions, because his programme was now, as it 
had been in 1843, to have none, — the policy 
of " wise and masterly inactivity." And the 
reasons which he had then adduced for this 
course were now as good as they had been at 
that time. He was probably right in suppos- 
iriof that a war would result in the loss of 
" every inch " of the Territory ; nor could any- 
body question that time was the ally of the 
United States, and was working in their favor 



268 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

with a force wliicli Great Britain would ulti- 
mately be unable to resist. But this being so, 
why did he not pursue his reasoning- to the last 
consequences? According to his argument, the 
United States were sure to get the whole Terri- 
tory, i£ they would but have patience and bide 
their time ; yet he did not contend for the con- 
tinuation of the joint occupancy so long as 
England could be prevailed upon not to give 
notice. He still asserted that, in his opinion, 
the title of the United States to the whole Ter- 
ritory was good, and that he wished to secure 
the jjossession of the whole to them ; but the 
whole tenor of his resolutions, and especially 
the last one, which declared that the offer of 
the forty-ninth degree was not an abandon- 
ment of their " best interests," clearly indicated 
that a fair compromise would meet with his 
approval. 

That was the wisest and therefore a truly 
patriotic policy, but would he have advocated 
it if Oreffon had been situated south of Ma- 
son and Dixon's line? The history of the 
annexation of Texas answers this question in 
an unmistakable manner. Only party passion 
could doubt that the patriotism of the South 
was strong enough to defend with energy the 
rights of the Union, whenever these rights were 
really "clear and unquestionable." But it is 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 269 

equally certain that Calhoun and the other re- 
presentatives of the South were not at all anx- 
ious to assume any burdens and submit to any 
saci-ifices in the defence of questionable rights, 
if the North was to have the benefit of them. 
As in the oj^inion of Giddings, the indomitable 
enemy of slavery, the necessity to restore the 
equilibrium between the two sections, which 
had been disturbed by the annexation of Texas 
in favor of the South, imperatively demanded 
that the United States should maintain their 
claims to Oregon at every hazard, so the South 
apprehended that this equilibrium would be 
disturbed in favor of the North by securing the 
whole Territory to the Union, and thei-efore 
was determined not to go a hair's breadth be- 
yond what the honor of the republic really re- 
quired. Calhoun had openly avowed that, so 
far as it depended upon him, the annexation of 
Texas should be effected without delay, though 
it shoidd lead to a war, in which England might 
be found on the side of Mexico. With regard 
to the Oregon question, however, he was sure 
to oppose with the utmost energy any policy 
tending to endanger the peace of the Union, 
and the more energetically, the more that policy 
was likely to result in an extension of the 
Union territory in the north. For a war with 
Great Britain would be, under all circumstances, 



270 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

most detrimental to tlie interests of tlie South, 
and might easily put the very existence of sla- 
very into imminent danger. In and out of Con- 
gress, leading men of the South openly avowed 
that these considerations for the special inter- 
ests of their section determined their course, 
and there was in fact no reason to conceal the 
truth. If the policy of the radicals was sure to 
do much harm to the South, and if it was, to 
say the least, very doubtful whether the United 
States as a whole would derive any benefit from 
it, the adoption of it would have been not only 
an act of folly, but a wrong on the part of the 
North. 'But, however sound the arguments of 
Calhoun and the other representatives of the 
South were, their sayings and doings, now that 
an interest of the North was at stake, did not 
agree with what they had said and done when 
they had contended for the interests of their 
" peculiar institution." The difference was the 
less justifiable because then the United States 
had had to deal with a political problem, while 
they had now to maintain, as they contended, 
an existing right. Besides, the South stood 
" pledged," as Bedinger, of Virginia, admitted, 
to support the policy of the West with regard 
to Oregon, in consideration of what the AYest 
had done for the South with regard to Texas. 
It is true, Calhoun had been personally no 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 271 

party to this bargain, which had been conchided 
and solemnly proclaimed to the whole world 
by the Baltimore Convention. The charge of 
" Punic faith," which Hannegan hurled against 
the South, was therefore too strong a term, so 
far as he was concerned. But he had not uttered 
a single syllable against this bargain, and the 
West had a right to infer from his silence that 
he approved and sanctioned it as well as the 
rest of the Baltimore platform. As he was the 
foremost leader of the annexationists, perfect 
candor would have required a declaration that 
he personally intended to stick to his policy of 
" mastei'ly inactivity ;" and now he even aban- 
doned that, and declared himself in favor of a 
compromise. Public opinion and history have 
decided the controversy in favor of this policy. 
No blame rests upon Calhoun for what he did 
now. His annexation game had not been played 
entirely above board, and for this wrong he had 
now to pay the just penalty. What he had done 
then exposed him now to the charges of incon- 
sistency and bad faith. And that was but the 
first drop of the bitter cup, which his own hand 
had pressed to his lips by the deed concerning 
which he declared to the last, " To no act of my 
life do I revert with moi-e satisfaction." 

On January 17, 1846, Webster had written 
to Mr. Sears, " Most of the Whigs in the Sen- 



272 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ate incline to remain rather quiet, and to follow 
the lead of Mr. Calhoun, lie is at the head 
of a party of six or seven, and as he professes 
still to be an administration man it is best to 
leave the work in his hands, at least for the 
present." Seward was very indignant at this 
" ill-starred coalition of nullifiers with Whigs, 
to save slavery and free trade." Webster, 
however, was certainly right in believing that 
the surest way to check the wild policy of the 
W^estern radicals effectually and in time was to 
confide the lead of the opposition to a professed 
" administration man ; " and Seward labored 
under a great mistake in supposing that he 
and the Western radicals were fighting at the 
side of the administration, against this opposi- 
tion, by contending in full earnest for the 
extreme views of President Polk's messages. 
Calhoun and his followers and allies would 
probably have succeeded in enlisting public 
opinion as strongly in favor of a sensible and 
sober policy, even if Polk had really wished to 
see the uncompi'omising course, which he offi- 
cially advocated, adopted by Congress. But 
their task was undoubtedly rendered much eas- 
ier by the fact that the President was secretly 
as anxious as they to see the fire quenched, 
which he had stirred up into so dangerous a 
conflagration. As to this question, Calhoun was 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 273 

a much better administration man than he was 
himself aware of. But in serving- the President 
here, where he apparently crossed the policy 
of the administration, he also unwittingly pro- 
moted its ultimate designs, which filled his mind 
with the greatest apprehensions for the future 
of the country. 

On March IG, 1846, Calhoun had said in the 
Senate, " A further inducement for dispatch in 
settling the Oregon question is that upon it de- 
pends the settlement of the question with Mex- 
ico." In this Polk perfectly agreed with him. 
Their ways parted only when they came to the 
question how and under what conditions the 
settlement with Mexico was to be effected. One 
of the main reasons why Calhoun so earnestly 
strove to bring about a compromise with Eng- 
land was the delusion that this was the surest 
way to avert a war with Mexico, while, in fact, 
the apprehension of a war with England was 
the only thing" which, perhaps, could have de- 
terred Polk from his aggressive policy towards 
Mexico. No more unjust accusation could be 
brouo'ht against Polk than that he wished a war 
with Mexico. He and his Cabinet infinitely pre- 
ferred the crooked ways of diplomacy to a war 
even with an enemy so weak that they could 
afford to despise him. They only were irrevo- 
cably determined to obtain from Mexico what 



274 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

they could not get without a war, and thus it 
became a " necessity " to " compel " Mexico, 
just as Calhoun had been " compelled " to ac- 
cept the office of Secretary of State, because the 
annexation of Texas was a "necessity." 

Calhoun had accompanied to the Mexican 
government the notification of the treaty of an- 
nexation with the assurance " that it is his [the 
President's] desire to settle all questions be- 
tween the two countries which may grow out of 
this treaty, or any other cause, on the most lib- 
eral and satisfactory terms, including that of 
boundary." On March 31, 1845, his declaration 
was repeated almost literally by Mr. Shannon 
on behalf of President Polk. Calhoun, how- 
ever, had intended to negotiate honestly with 
Mexico about the contested boundary of Texas, 
while, according to Polk, " the most liberal and 
satisfactory terms " were, that not a single inch 
of the territory claimed by Texas could, under 
any circumstances, be granted to Mexico, and 
that, in order to prevent future conflicts. New 
Mexico and California should be sold by Mex- 
ico to the United States. As Mexico could not 
be prevailed upon to see the question in the 
same light, the American army, under General 
Taylor, was ordered (January 13, 1846) to take 
possession of the contested strip of land, and to 
assume such an attitude that an appeal to the 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 275 

arbitrament of the sword was inevitable, unless 
Mexico had entirely lost her self-respect. 

Calhoun heard of the fatal order only " a 
long- time after " it had been given. He depre- 
cated it, because he clearly foi-esaw its perni- 
cious consequences, and wished the Senate to 
take some action forcing the President to re- 
call it. But he himself refused to move in the 
matter, because, as he said, " it was important 
I should maintain the kindest and most friendly 
relations, in order that I should have some 
weight in bringing the Oregon question to an 
amicable settlement." That this was no after- 
thought is fully proved by his whole subsequent 
course with regard to the Mexican war. But it 
is equally certain that Calhoun here committed 
the greatest and most fatal political blunder of 
his whole career. Polk knew as well and bet- 
ter than he that Taylor's advance from Corpus 
Christi would lead to a war with Mexico, and 
it was folly to think it possible that a President 
of the United States could see a double war 
with Mexico and Great Britain in the same 
light as it would be seen by a demagogical 
stump-speaker, intoxicated by his own spread- 
eagle harangues. The order of January 13, 
1846, would never have been issued if Polk had 
not made up his mind to satisfy England with 
regard to Ore":on. Calhoun could have crossed 



276 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the way of the President in the most determined 
manner, without risking anything except his 
standing as an " administration man," and that 
he was sure to lose at any rate. 

On Saturday, May 9, 1846, Polk received the 
welcome news that a skirmish had taken jjlace 
on the eastern bank of the Rio Grande. On 
the following Monday he sent a message to Con- 
gress, which culminated in the assertion that 
" war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts 
to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico herself." 
The House of Representatives at once indorsed 
the bold statement, without any examination 
of its truth, and without allowing the minority 
a single minute to develop their views of the 
question. In the Senate a short debate could 
not be avoided, but here, too, the administration 
party succeeded in preventing the minority from 
entering at all upon a previous examination of 
the main question. Calhoun demanded in vain 
" at least one day " to consult the documents 
accompanying the message, " as containing the 
ground on which the bill [" for the prosecution 
of the existing war"] was to pass." In vain 
did he and those who acted with him repeatedly 
express their willingness to vote at once " the 
amount of supplies contained in the bill, or even 
a greater amount," so that the succoring of 
Taylor might not be delayed one hour, in case 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 277 

he .should really stand in need of it. In vain did 
Calhoun demonstrate that hostilities did not ne- 
cessarily constitute a war, and that the President's 
assertion was not and could not be true, because 
the right to declare war was granted by the 
Constitution exclusively to Congress. In vain 
was attention called to the fact that it was not 
known as yet whether the Mexican govern- 
ment would approve of General Arista's cross- 
ing the Rio Grande. In vain was the majority 
reminded that the history of the United States 
afforded more than one example of most out- 
rageous hostilities, in which they had been the 
assailed party, and which yet had not led to a 
war, and much less had anybody ventured to 
assert that these in themselves constituted a 
war. Like the President, the majority wanted 
the war in order to conquer New Mexico and 
California, and therefore no reasons, however 
weighty and unanswerable, could be of any 
avail. On May 13 the war bill was passed by 
a vote of forty against two. Calhoun had ab- 
stained from voting, for " he could neither vote 
affirmatively nor negatively," because " he had 
no certain evidence to go on." " Pie could not 
agree to make war on Mexico by making war 
on the Constitution." Therewith he ceased to 
be an " administration man," without joining 
the oj)positiou. More solitary than ever before, 



278 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

he pursued his independent course. He neither 
broke nor bent, but the furrows on his forehead 
deepened, and his eyes looked more gloomy and 
careworn than ever ; for without abandoning a 
single delusion as to the nature or future of 
slavery, he saw but too clearly that the more 
successfully the war was waged, the more the 
"peculiar institution" and, in consequence, the 
existence of the Union, became endangered. 

Two presidential messages — one of August 
4, 1846, addressed to the Senate, and the other 
of the 8th of the same month, addressed to Con- 
gress — indirectly avowed the real purposes of 
the war, which everybody had known from the 
first, Polk asked two million dollars to nego- 
tiate a peace, in which he proposed to pay " a 
fair equivalent " for some territory which Mex- 
ico was to cede, in order to adjust the boundary 
by a line " securing perpetual peace and good 
neighborhood between the two republics." The 
House promptly acted on the suggestion of the 
President, but on motion of Mr. Wilmot, of 
Pennsylvania, a proviso was attached, by which 
slavery and involuntary servitude were forever 
prohibited in any territory which might be ac- 
quired from Mexico. An amendment, moved 
by Mr. Wick, of Iowa, which divided the event- 
ual acquisitions by the line of the Missouri Com- 
promise, was rejected by a vote of 69 against 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 279 

54. The fulfilment of the dark forebodings 
which had caused Calhoun to oppose the war 
with all his energy had therewith begun. On 
February 24, 1847, he said in the Senate : — 

" Every senator knows that I was opposed to the 
war ; but none save myself knows the depth of that 
opposition. With my conceptions of its character 
and consequences, it was impossible for me to vote 
for it. When, accordingly, I was deserted by every 
friend on this side of the House, including my then 
honorable colleague among the rest [Mr. McDiiffie], 
I was not shaken in the least degree in reference to 
my course. On the passage of the act recognizing 
the war, I said to many of my friends that a deed 
had been done from which the country would not be 
able to recover for a long time, if ever ; and added, 
It has dropped a curtain between the present and 
the future, which to me is impenetrable ; and for the 
first time since I have been in pubHc life I am un- 
able to see the future. I also added. It has closed the 
first volume of our political history under the Consti- 
tution, and opened the second, and that no mortal 
could tell what would be written in it." 

For many years, he had been the trusted 
leader of the South with regard to everything 
relating to slavery, though but a small band 
had kept pace with him. And in those porten- 
tous May days, when he, who had always rushed 
on in advance of all, the most radical of the 



280 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

radical slavooracy, cried Halt ! beware ! all 
dashed past him with indignant impatience, as 
if he had been the last and most insignificant 
among all the political apprentices. Now they 
began to ask themselves whether he had not 
after all been right. The day after the war bill 
had been passed by the House of Kepresenta- 
tives, Giddings had said : — 

" We sought to extend and perpetuate slavery in a 
peaceful manner by the annexation of Texas. Now 
we are about to effect that object by war and con- 
quest. . . . Now I say to those gentlemen who are 
so zealous for this conquest that our slave States will 
be tlie last to consent to the annexation oi free States 
to this Union. I know that Southern men are now, 
and have been, zealous in bringing on this war and 
for extending our territory ; but they will, at no dis- 
tant day, view the subject in its true light, and will 
change their position, and will oppose the extension 
of our territory in any direction, unless slavery be 
also extended." 

As soon as the words " territorial acquisi- 
tions " were officially pronounced, the verifica- 
tion of this prediction began. The din of war 
on the Mexican battlefields was almost drowned 
by the vociferous passion with which the vic- 
tors quarrelled over the expected spoils of the 
vanquished. The Southern President, acting in 
perfect unison with the slavocracy, had not 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 281 

been disappointed in the expectation that the 
bloody flag, which he had dug* out of the graves 
of the Spanish conquistadores^ could be canied 
to the shores of the Pacific with the hearty ap- 
proval of the Noi-th. But had he quite forgot- 
ten that it was absolutely impossible to make 
any conquest simply for the Union ? The United 
States had ceased long ago to be a Union merely 
of States ; they were above all a Union of two 
heterogeneous sections. There was not a foot of 
Union territory which was not the legal domain 
of one or other of these two sections, and much 
less could an inch of new territory be acquired 
without legally assigning it to one or other of 
them. And now a stanch Democrat and an ar- 
dent supporter of the annexation of Texas met 
the intimation that new territory was to be ac- 
quired with the demand that the South should 
be at once legally excluded from all participa- 
tion in the fruits of the common exertions. The 
South would not and could not submit to that, 
for it was not only not fair, but it was the death 
sentence of slavery. The balance of power be- 
tween the two sections would be irretrievably 
destroyed, and that in itself would be the death- 
knell of the " peculiar institution." And did 
the past history of the slavery conflict admit 
any doubt that the slavocracy would resist its 
doom to the knife ? On the other hand, how- 



282 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

ever, was it likely that tlie North would yield, 
if a man of the antecedents of Mr. Wilmot de- 
manded such a proviso ? 

Every day brought new proofs how true Cal- 
houn's prediction had been, that in the North 
the future belonged to the spirit of abolitionism. 
Just now it had received by the annexation of 
Texas a more powerful impetus than ever be- 
fore, and the South undertook to force the 
North into a concession, in comparison with 
which all the other demands of the slavocracy 
were as nothing. Mexico had abolished sla- 
very long ago. To allow the South to carry its 
" peculiar institution " into a part of the con- 
quered territory was therefore nothing less than 
slavery propagandism with powder and lead. 
The Northern freemen were to allow millions of 
dollars, which they had earned with the sweat 
of their brows, to be spent, and the blood of 
their sons and of the Mexican patriots to be 
spilled like water, in order to open a new field 
of activity to the slave-driver's whip on a soil 
which was consecrated to universal liberty and 
legally protected against pollution by the tread 
of a slave. Were the descendants of the Revo- 
lutionary patriots willing to present the world 
with such a commentary on the Declaration of 
Independence, and to hide their faces in shame 
before the semi-barbarians of Mexico ? Thus 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 283 

the story of the treasure-digger, In whose hand 
the gold turned into glowing coals, had become 
true ; but, unlike that fabled personage, who 
threw down the present of the evil spirit with 
a curse, the United States had to keep at least 
a part of their conquests. It was folly to ex- 
pect that a war which, under false pretexts, had 
been undertaken for the purpose of making cer- 
tain territorial acquisitions would, under any 
circumstances, be terminated by the adminis- 
tration and the majority of Congress without 
securing any compensaiion, after more territory 
than they had ever coveted had been actually 
conquered. 

Here was a mass of difficulties boiling and 
seething in the caldron of the Mexican war, 
which was beyond the skill of any political cook. 
Perhaps some means could be discovered to let 
the steam escape, so that no explosion would 
ensue, but nothing could prevent the gradual 
corrosion of all the rivets by the poisonous 
fumes. Ardent Northern patriots helped the 
President to cover the whole width of the con- 
tinent with the folds of the star-spangled banner, 
and thereby rendered the temporary destruction 
of the Union inevitable ; hot-headed slavocrats 
sustained Polk's policy and urged him on, in 
order to realize the prediction of Henry A. 
Wise, that the " peculiar institution " would 



284 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

irresistibly press on, until the waves of the Pa- 
cific put a stop to its conquering march ; and 
thereby they sealed the fate of slavery. 

Calhoun acknowledged that he was " unable 
to see the future," and that he did not know 
what the second volume of the history of the 
United States under the Constitution would 
contain. If he had probed his own mind to the 
bottom, he would have been forced to add that 
he was glad of it. He would have shut his 
eyes with a shudder, if they could have pierced 
through the mist, for a voice, which nothing 
could silence, constantly whispered into his ear 
that it covered an unfathomable abyss. Now 
and then he tried to ease his heavy mind by re- 
minding the South how earnestly and persistently 
he had raised his warning voice. But that could 
brine: no comfort either to himself or others. 
On the contrary, his reproaches were met by 
the charge that he more than anybody else was 
responsible for the war, because it was the legiti- 
mate or even unavoidable consequence of the 
annexation of Texas. With hot indignation he 
repelled the charge as an absurd calumny ; for 
the annexation of Texas had been an impera- 
tive patriotic duty towards the Union, and he 
had been willing to meet Mexico with regard 
to the boundary question in a most conciliatory 
and liberal spirit. 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 285 

The latter assertion was probably true, but 
was it thereby proved that Benton's accusation 
had absolutely nothing to rest upon? Let it 
be granted, for argunient's sake, that he would 
have come to an amicable understandino* with 
Mexico, had it been certain or even likely that 
the unravelling of this snarl would be left to 
his discretion. The war was the legitimate 
consequence of the annexation, though it might 
have been prevented if the helm had remained 
in his hands. He had taught the jieople that 
it was not onl}^ light, but a national duty, to 
make territorial acquisitions, if the slavocracy 
declared its need of them for the safety of sla- 
very, and that the stays of moral scruples might 
be loosened to almost any extent for this laud- 
able purpose. He., therefore, had no right to 
blame Polk and the war party for anything, ex- 
cept that they were not satiated when he cried 
Halt ! enough ! They were over-zealous and 
maladroit disciples, but still they were his dis- 
ciples. It was the old story : the wizard had 
called the spirits merely to prepare a bath, and 
his half-taught apprentices had them go on car- 
rying water, till the house was flooded and de- 
structive streams burst through every door and 
window. 

But what was the use of these criminations 
and recriminations ? What had been done coidd 



286 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

not be undone. There the facts were, and they 
had to be dealt with. Calhoun did not retire 
to his tent like the irate Achilles. Just because 
Polk's policy had led the slavocracy into a dan- 
o;erous defile, it was all the more sure that the 
shield and the spear of its veteran hero would 
be seen at their wonted place in the thickest of 
the fiffht. But to demand that he should now 
simply step into the ranks of the administration 
columns and obey the commands of their leader, 
and to denounce him because he refused to do 
so, was folly. Senator Turney, of Tennessee, 
charged that he was prompted by his presi- 
dential aspirations to obstruct the passage of 
bills necessary for the successful prosecution of 
the war. Calhoun repelled the charge (Febru- 
ary 12, 1847) with passionate indignation : " If 
the senator speaks of me as an asj)irant for the 
presidency, he is entirely mistaken. I am no 
aspirant, — never have been. I would turn on 
my heel from the presidency, and he has uttered 
a libel upon me. . . . No, sir. The whole vol- 
ume of my life shows me to be above that." 
We have seen that as to the past the facts 
were pretty far from bearing out his self-lauda- 
tory assertion, but as to the present the in- 
sulting intimation was indeed utterly unfounded. 
It was a little too early after the last presidential 
canvass for him to declare, " At my time of life 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 287 

the presidency is nothing ; " but the history of 
that canvass had taught him that to indulge 
any longer in such aspirations would be folly, 
with a tino-e of ridiculousness. Never ajrain 
would he have permitted his name even to be 
mentioned as a candidate. And even if he had 
not understood the lessons of that canvass as 
well as he did, he would have scorned every 
temptation, at this critical juncture of affairs, 
to allow his course to be in the least influenced 
by any personal considerations. 

On the other hand, it is easily to be under- 
stood how the war party came to suspect hira 
of personal motives. He was so deeply con- 
vinced that the war was a blunder and a calam- 
ity that he allowed once more the doctrinarian 
bent of his mind to get the better of his cool 
practical judgment. Turney had been pro- 
voked into his accusation by a speech, in which 
Calhoun had very elaborately advocated the 
policy of a "defensive line." The active mili- 
tary operations were to be entirely stopped. 
The United States should confine themselves 
to holding the conquered territory on a certain 
line, quietly waiting for Mexico to make up her 
mind to come to terms on this basis. This he 
declared to be "the policy best calculated to 
brin"" the war . . . with certainty to a success- 
ful termination, and that with the least sac- 



288 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

rifice of men and mone}^ and with the least 
hazard of disastrous consequences and loss of 
standing- and reputation to the country." The 
difficulties which the enormous distances, the 
climate, and above all the obstinate patriotic 
pride of the Mexicans opposed to a successful 
termination of the war, in spite of the brilliant 
achievements of the American arms, were so 
great, that one can understand how a clever 
man could hit upon this strange plan, which to- 
day must appear simply absurd to everybody 
who is not acquainted with all the details of 
those countless embarrassments. Nevertheless, 
though the idea certainly could not stand the 
test of a sober and somewhat close examina- 
tion, yet if the partisans of the administration 
had been familiar with what had occurred be- 
hind the curtain, they would have felt less 
tempted to ridicule it, and to give it a slight 
coloring of that " moral treason " with which 
they charged all the opponents of the war. The 
President himself had been in favor of this 
strange project of the " defensive line." The 
orio-inal draft of his message had recommended 
it to Cono-ress. Calhoun had known this ; but 
he Imd not been informed of the alteration 
which Polk had made at the instigation of Ben- 
ton, who had convinced him that such a passive 
policy of " masterly inactivity " was utterly in- 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 289 

compatible with tlie genius of the American 
people. 

This was so true that probably neither Con- 
gress nor the people would have hesitated one 
moment to reject the proposition as not only in- 
expedient, but also pusillanimous and deroga- 
tory to the national honor, even if the adminis- 
tration had supported it with all its influence. 
As the personal opinion of a single senator, 
it was, therefore, of no consequence whatever. 
The majority could have afforded very well to 
pass it over with a few indifferent remarks, and 
consideration for the man as well as policy ought 
to have advised such a course. With regard 
to the main question, Calhoun had announced 
in the same speech his complete acquiescence in 
the unalterable facts : — 

" It would be vain to expect that we could prevent 
our people from penetrating into California. . . . 
Even before our present difficulties with Mexico, the 
process had begun. Under such circumstances, to 
make peace with Mexico, without acquiring a consider- 
able portion, at least, of this uninhabited i-egion, would 
lay the foundation of new troubles and subject us to 
the hazard of new conflicts. . . . But it is not only in 
reference to a permanent peace with Mexico that it 
is desirable that this vast uninhabited region shoulil 
pass into our possession. High considerations con- 
nected with civilization and commerce make it no less 



290 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

so. We alone can people it with, an industrious and 
civilized race, which can develop its resources, and 
add a new and extensive region to the domain of com- 
merce and civilization." 

Once admitted that extensive territorial ac- 
quisitions had become inevitable, the other ques- 
tion, how they should be disposed of with re- 
gard to slavery, had also to be met directly. If 
Calhoun did not at once give a full answer to it, 
his delay did not arise from any desire to con- 
ceal his views. The object of his speech was 
to recommend the " defensive line," and for 
that purpose it sufficed to say how the terri- 
tory to be acquired should not be disposed of. 
That he did with great emphasis : — 

" We are told — and I fear that appearances justify 
it — that all parties in the non-slave-holding States 
are united in the determination that they shall have 
the exclusive benefit and monopoly ; that such provi- 
sions shall be made by treaty or law as to exclude all 
who hold slaves in the South from emigrating with 
their property into the acquired country. ... Be as- 
sured, if there be stern determination on their part to 
exclude us, there will be determination still sterner on 
ours not to be excluded." 

" This known pointed division of opinion " 
as to the ultimate disposition of the territory 
seemed to him to render the vigorous prosecu- 
tion of the war iiupossible : — 



OREGON AND THP: MEXICAN WAR 291 

" Now, if I may judge from what has heen de- 
clared on this floor, from wliat I hear on all sides, the 
memhers from the non-slave-holding- States, if they 
were sure that slavery would not be excluded from 
the acquired territory, would be decidedly opposed 
to what tffey call vigorous prosecution of the war, or 
the acquisition of a single foot of territory. Can they 
then believe that the members of the slave-holding 
States, on the op})osite supposition, would not be 
equally opposed to the further prosecution of the war 
and the acquisition of territory ? " 

Ten days after the delivery of this speech, 
on February 19, 1847, Calhoun presented a set 
of resolutions to the Senate, covering the whole 
ground of the slave question with regard to the 
Territories. The key-note of the remarks with 
which he prefaced them was the assertion, that 
" the day that the balance between the two sec- 
tions of the counti-y ... is destroyed is a day 
that will not be far removed from political re- 
volution, anarchy, civil war, and widespread dis- 
aster." This was not intended as a threat, nor 
even as a warning, for he knew that it would 
not be heeded. It was simply the statement of 
the solemn conviction by which his course was 
determined. In his opinion he had been forced 
upon the position which he was about to assume. 
Adams's journal is documentary jDroof that he 
had not " always," as he now asserted, considered 



292 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the Missouri Compromise a surrender of the 
" high principles of the Constitution." But it 
was of little consequence when he had come to 
that conviction. At all events, he now consid- 
ered that compromise " a great error," and, in 
spite of that, it had been at his suggestion, as 
he informed the Senate, that the continuation 
of the compi-omise line had been proposed in 
the House of Representatives, as a settlement 
of the controversy about the territoiy to be ac- 
quired from Mexico. He had not wanted the 
Southern members to be " disturbers of this 
Union." But the pi-oposition had been twice 
voted down by a decided majority ; therefore his 
advice was now, " Let us have done with com- 
promises. Let us go back and stand upon the 
Constitution ! " 

The resolutions affirmed : The Territories are 
the common proj^erty of the several States com- 
posing the Union. Congress has no right to 
do any act whatever that shall directly, or by 
its effects, deprive any State of its full and 
equal right in any Territory : a law which 
would prevent the citizens of certain States 
from emigrating, with their property, into any 
Territories would be such an act. Admission 
of a State into the Union may not be made 
dependent upon any other condition, except 
that its Constitution shall be republican. 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 293 

A refutation of this doctrine cannot here be 
attempted, for that woukl require a recapitula- 
tion of the whole slavery question and of the 
doctrine of state sovereignty. As to the ques- 
tion of constitutional law, it suffices here to say 
that, whether Calhoun was right or wrong, the 
whole history of the United States proved the 
assertion to be an absurdity ; that what he 
claimed to be a " high constitutional right " of 
the slave-holders was " not the less clear because 
deduced from the entire body of the instrument, 
and the nature of the subject to which it re- 
lates, instead of being specially provided for." 
If this " constitutional right " was as clear as if 
it had been specially provided for by the Con- 
stitution, then all the Southern statesmen, ever 
since the adoption of the Constitution, must 
have been utterly devoid of brains or absolutely 
nerveless, for the right had never been ac- 
knowledged or exercised. Calhoun himself 
opened " the second volume " of the histoiy of 
the United States " under the Constitution," 
and, by his resolutions, he marked a new era, 
because they were not mere legal abstractions, 
but a political manifesto, announcing a revolu- 
tionary programme of fearful import. 

" The Constitution which we now present 
is the result of a spirit of amity, and of that 
mutual deference and concession which the pe- 



294 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

cuHarity of our political situation rendered in« 
dispensable." Thus the framers of the Consti- 
tution had characterized their own work. North 
and South had always declared with one voice 
that the constitutional convention at Philadel- 
phia would have labored in vain if the compro- 
mises concerning slavery had not been agreed 
upon. Compromise had ever since been the 
unsteady compass by which the course of the 
Union ship had been directed in the slavery 
question. To that, and to that alone, it was 
due that the domain of slavery and the sway of 
the slavocracy over the national politics had con- 
stantly increased. And now Calhoun demanded 
that a heavy line should be drawn through this 
word " compromise," and that it should for all 
time to come remain expunged. It is true, he 
only wanted " to go back and stand upon the 
Constitution," but in the eyes of the North his 
interpretation of it absolutely divested it of 
the character of a compromise, and exacted the 
unconditional surrender of the Union to the 
slavocracy. Suppose he read the Constitution 
correctly : that did not change the fact that it 
was understood very differently by the North. 

The Constitution in itself, however, was no- 
thing but a dead piece of parchment, not even 
able to resist the attacks of moths and mice. 
There was no magical force in it, by which it 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 295 

could of itself make known and enforce its true 
will and intent. Like every other law, it be- 
came an active force only by the agency of the 
people and their several constituted organs. 
Whether right or wrong, that construction of 
the Constitution had to prevail which the people 
and their constituted organs believed to be 
correct. Was it, then, possible that they would 
ever adopt the doctrine of Calhoun's resolutions, 
according to which slaves could be brought into 
*'any Territory of the United States, acquired 
or to be acquired," and according to which, in 
consequence, the slave-holders had been most 
grievously wronged, ever since the establishment 
of the Constitution, by excluding their human 
chattels from all the Territories north of Mason 
and Dixon's line ? 

The free States had by far the larger part of 
the population of the Union, and they went on 
steadily and rapidly gaining upon the South. 
Many years ago, however, Calhoun had declared 
with the utmost emphasis that, in the Xorth, 
the future inevitably belonged to the spirit of 
abolitionism ; and by this time the prediction 
"was so far fulfilled that, according to his own 
testimony, all parties in the free States were 
united in the determination to exclude slavery 
from the territory to be acquired from Mexico. 
The experience of the past certainly justified 



296 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the hope that it would be possible to break up 
this unanimity, but would it ever be possible to 
unite the majority of the whole people, irrespec- 
tiv^e of Congress, upon the basis of Calhoun's 
claim ? The acknowledgment of this claim 
would have been nothing less than the renun- 
ciation on the part of the Union of any policy 
and will as to the future of its own political 
nature ; for the Territories were but inchoate 
States, and experience had taught that, wher- 
ever slavery gained a firm foothold, it became 
the paramount formative principle. Calhoun 
certainly believed in his own doctrine, but that 
he should have expected ever to reconcile the 
majority of the people to it seems hardly cred- 
ible. His idea probably was to obtain a good 
deal by imperiously demanding all. But he had 
too carefully studied the history of the slavery 
conflict not to know that, by thus demanding 
all, the hatred of slavery and the opposition to 
the slavocracy would be greatly intensified with 
a very considerable portion of the Northern peo- 
ple. The formation of a majority upon any 
positive programme, therefore, evidently pre- 
supposed the consolidation of the whole South 
upon the slavery question, and the application 
of very powerful levers to induce the rest of the 
Northern people to support the slavocracy, in 
spite of the prevailing current of public opinion 
in their own section. 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 297 

The framers of the Constitution had declared 
" the consolidation of the Union " to be " the 
greatest interest of every true American, in 
which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, 
perhaps our national existence." We have seen 
how ardently Calhoun professed the same faith 
in his earlier years. Now, he boldly proclaims 
the unrestrained expansion of slavery over all 
the Territories of the Union to be the shibbo- 
leth around which the whole South must rally. 

" Henceforward, let all party distinction among us 
cease, so long as this aggression on our rights and our 
honor shall continue, on the part of tlie non-slave- 
holding States. Let us profit by the example of the 
abolition party, who, as small as tliey are, have ac- 
quired so much influence by the course they have pur- 
sued. As tliey make the destruction of our domestic 
institution the paramount question, so let us make, on 
our part, its safety the paramount question ; let us re- 
gard every man as of our party who stands up in its 
defence, and every one as against us who does not, 
until aggression ceases." 

That is the only means to save slavery and 
with it the Union. It is the only means, but it 
is also infallible. 

"But if we should act as we ought, — if we, by 
our promptitude, energy, and unanimity, prove that we 
stand ready to defend our rights, and to maintain our 
perfect equality as members of the Union, be the coiv 



298 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

sequences what they may, and that the immecKate 
and necessary effect of courting abolition votes, by 
either party, would be to lose ours, — a very different 
result would certainly follow. That lai'ge portion of 
the non-slave-holding States who, although they con- 
sider slavery as an evil, are not disposed to violate the 
Constitution, and much less to endanger its overthrow, 
and with it the Union itself, would take sides with us 
against our assailants ; while the sound portion, who 
are already with us, would rally to the rescue. The 
necessary effect would be, that the party leaders and 
their followers, who expect to secure the presidential 
election by the aid of the abolitionists, seeing their 
liojies blasted by the loss of our votes, would drop 
their courtship, and leave the party, reduced to insig- 
nificance, with scorn. The end would be, should we 
act in the manner indicated, the rally of a new party 
in the non-slave-holding States, more powerful than 
either of tlie old, who, on this great question, would 
be faithful to all the compromises and obligations of 
the Constitution ; and who, by uniting with us, would 
put a final stop to the further agitation of this danger- 
ous question." 

In truth, he was no novice in all the arts and 
artifices of party politics. How well he was 
acquainted with the most sterling political qual- 
ity of the Northern people, their unfaltering 
loyalty and their religious respect for the law, 
and how well he knew how to make use of that 
for his purposes ! Still better was he acquainted 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 1290 

with the doughty character of the professional 
Northern politician, and he knew more thor- 
oughly how to profit by it for the benefit of the 
slavocracy. But there was still the old mistake 
in his calculation, which vitiated it from one end 
to the other. The more unanswerably he proved 
the irrepressible character of the conflict be- 
tween slavery and liberty, and the more vio- 
lently he pushed it to its climax, so much the 
more closely he shut his eyes tc the fact that 
slavery and the Union coiild not be saved, and 
so much the more loudly he cried that this 
could and icould be done. He was only too suc- 
cessful in the consolidation of the South, and 
the effect of that upon the Northern politicians 
probably surpassed his own expectations. The 
slavocracy achieved triumphs, in comparison 
with which all its former victories appeared al- 
n)0st ridiculously insignificant. But all these 
triumphs only hastened the last inevitable con- 
sequence of the consolidation of the South, 
namely, the corresponding consolidation of the 
North. The perfecting of the consolidation of 
the two sections upon the slavery issue, how- 
ever, ivas the breaking up of the Union. 

The left wing of the Northern Democrats, 
which used to be called " Copperheads," throws 
the moral responsibility for the civil war upon 
the Republicans, because they forced the South 



300 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

into secession by forming a sectional party. 
This view of the case takes the symptom for 
the cause. The Union was not broken up be- 
cause sectional parties had been formed, but 
sectional parties were formed because tlie Union 
had actually become sectionalized. The be- 
ginning of this process dated back to the con- 
stitutional convention at Philadelphia, and its 
roots were imbedded in the slavery compromises 
of the Constitution. The abolitionists — that 
is to say, the abolitionists proper, and not all 
whom Calhoun was pleased to call so — had 
been the first to recognize this fact, but they 
were not, properly speaking, a j^oUtical party, 
because they refrained by princijjle from acting 
as such. The slavocracy was the first to pro- 
claim the principle that the slavery issue must 
be the division line of the political parties. It 
did this with full consciousness of the import of 
the declaration ; it carried the principle much 
farther than the Republicans did, until long 
after the beginning of the civil war ; and Cal- 
houn was in this respect, as in all others, the 
foremost leader of the slavocracy. The Repub- 
licans only opj)osed the extension of slavery. 
Calhoun, however, demanded that the South 
should unite in making the slavery question in 
all its forms and bearings the main plank of its 
political platform, and, in this shape, he wanted 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 301 

" to force the issue upon the North." He writes 
to a member of the Legislature of Ahibuma, " I 
would even go one step farther, and say that it 
is our duty — due to ourselves, to the Union, 
and our political institutions — to force the is- 
sue on the North. ... I would regard any com- 
promise or adjustment of the [Wilmot] ])roviso, 
or even its defeat, without meeting the danger 
in its whole length and breadth, as very unfor- 
tunate for us. It would lull us to sleep again, 
without removing the danger, or materially di- 
minishing it." And how did he propose thus 
to meet the danger ? " There is and can be but 
one remedy short of disunion, and that is to re- 
taliate, on our part, by refusing to fulfil the stip- 
ulations in their favor, or such as we may select 
as the most efficient." He proposed a conven- 
tion of the Southern States, which should agree 
that, until full justice should be rendered the 
South, all the Southern ports should be closed 
to the sea-jjoinff vessels of the North. The 
northwestern States would be detached from 
the northeastern by leaving open the trade by 
river and railroad, and the northeastern States 
would surely come to terms, for " their un- 
bounded avarice would, in the end, control 
them." To-day, the South knows whether the 
avarice of the northeastern States is quite so 
unbounded as Calhoun thought, and whether 



302 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the northwestern States are willing to let it de- 
pend npon the gracious good will of the South 
whether the national rivers, and especially the 
mouth of the Mississippi, shall be open to their 
trade. 

One thing, however, Calhoun ought to have 
known already at that time, namely, that the 
North would never acknowledge such a mea- 
sure to be a " retaliation." He said, " That the 
refusal on their part would justify us in refus- 
ing to fulfil those [stipulations of the national 
compact] in their favor is too clear to admit 
of argument." It was, in fact, too clear to 
admit of argument that, in the most essential 
point, the two cases had no more in common 
than yes and no. The opponents of slavery 
were convinced that Congress had the constitu- 
tional right, or even that it was in duty bound, 
to prevent slavery from entering the free ter- 
ritories to be acquired from Mexico ; and even 
Calhoun forbore to charge them directly with 
doing violence to their consciences and acting 
against their better knowledge. He, on the 
contrary, unreservedly acknowledged that he 
intended to deprive the North of its constitu- 
tional rights. 

Benton very correctly said that such a reso- 
lution on the part of the South was the break- 
ing up of the Union ; and now, as before, there 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 303 

were not lacking people who maintained that it 
was this that Calhoun was aiming at. They 
understood the man the less in proportion as the 
crisis and catastrophe more nearly approached. 
In the same letter, above quoted from, he said : 

"This brings up the question, How can it [the dan- 
ger] be so met, lalthout resorting to the dissolution of 
the Union ? I say without its dissolution, for, in my 
opinion, a high and sacred regard for the Constitu- 
tion, as well as the dictates of wisdom, make it our 
duty in this case, as well as all others, not to resort 
to, or even to look to, that extreme remedy, until all 
others have failed, and then only in defence of our 
liberty and safety." 

That he honestly and ardently wished the pre- 
servation of the Union is, indeed, as certain as 
it is certain that his remedies had the effect of 
sledge-hammer strokes. The consciousness of 
weakness drove him to the desperate resolution 
to burn the ship of compromise, which had car- 
ried the slavocracy so far, and to demand the 
unconditional submission of the North. " We 
are now stronger relatively than we shall be 
hereafter, politically and morally." He thought 
the last moment had come, when it was still 
possible to chain down the North so absolutely 
by positive law that slavery could scorn all the 
a^ssaults of the brutal facts and the spirit of the 
times. In truth there never had been a time 



304 JOHN C, CALHOUN 

when that coiikl be clone, and it grew every 
day less possible to do it, because this growing 
weakness of the slavocracy was no secret to the 
North. The forging of new chains for the 
Northern States made them feel more than ever 
the weight of those which they already wore ; 
and in shaking these, while listening to the com- 
plaints of the Southern States that their politi- 
cal and moral strength was irremediably on the 
wane, they learned better to know their own 
strength. The will and the ability of the North 
grew to do what, in its opinion, every political 
and moral consideration bade it do. The more 
the South succeeded in chaining do^vn tiie North 
by positive law, the louder and the more ener- 
getic the protest of the spirit of the times and 
of the facts became. And had Calhoun quite 
forgotten that many years ago he himself had 
declared that the ultimate decision would be 
given not by the law, but by the facts ? So far 
from swinging the firebrand of sectional agita- 
tion without cause, and only to farther secret 
treacherous designs, as so many accused him of 
doing, he now, as heretofore, shrunk back from 
drawing the last conclusion from his own pre- 
mises, because he would not believe that slavery 
and the Union could not both be saved. With 
every new contest, it became more apparent 
that the curse resting upon slavery was, that 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 305 

every new success of the slavocracy was an- 
other step towards the judgment and doom of 
the " peculiar institution." This curse, there- 
fore, necessarily weighed most heavily upon the 
thoughts and the deeds of him who, in all the 
tremendous exertions of the slavocracy against 
the onslaughts of the spirit of the times and of 
the facts, proved himself to be alone " a host." 
With the consolidated South, he now drove the 
North from the battlefield of the Wilmot pro- 
viso, but the quiver on his back was almost 
empty, the bow in his hand was cracked, and 
the field proved to be a barren conquest, so that 
the ultimate effects of the victory were those of 
a crushing defeat. 

Benton, in his " Thirty Years' View," lays 
great stress uj^on the fact that Calhoun never 
called up his resolutions to be acted upon by the 
Senate, because they had been received with gen- 
eral disfavor. It is hard to imagine how Benton, 
after witnessing the further development of the 
controversy, could still think that this afforded 
any reason for exultation. Calhoun continued 
to oppose, with the utmost energy, the giddy 
agitators of unbounded territorial aggrandize- 
ment, though the contemplated acquisitions lay 
so far to the South that the slavocracy would 
probably have been able to secure the prey for 
the " peculiar institution." When there seemed 



306 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

to be some danger that it would be impossible 
" to conquer peace " unless the whole Mexican 
republic was taken possession of, he still ad- 
vocated his "defensive line," and he sternly 
put himself against Polk's recommendation of a 
temporary military occupation of Yucatan. But 
while he did his best to pi-event the sea of dif- 
ficulties, into which the Union had been thrown 
by the craving for more land, from being agi- 
tated even more profoundly, he did not recede 
one inch from the position which he had taken 
with regard to the equal right of the Southern 
States to all the Territories. He had refrained 
from calling up his resolutions, but the number 
of converts to his doctrines increased at such 
a rate that the " abstractions " rapidly changed 
into a positive programme. 

A bill for the organization of the Oregon 
Territory had been passed by the House of Re- 
presentatives at the second session of the 29th 
Congress. The Senate committee, to which the 
bill was referred, moved to strike out the clause 
which, in conformity with the provisional laws 
enacted by the inhabitants of the Territory, 
prohibited slavery. As this motion would have 
led to endless debates, the bill was laid on 
the table, and Oregon remained unorganized. 
Benton asserts that the motion to strike out was 
made at the instigation of Calhoun. However 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 307 

that be, at all events the fate of the bill in the 
Senate lay in the announcement on the ])ait of 
the South that Oregon, although lying entirely 
north of Mason and Dixon's line, should not 
without more ado be given up to the North, and 
the resistance was based upon the doctrine of 
Calhoun's resolutions. 

When the subject was taken up again by 
the 30th Congress, it was ojienly avowed that 
slavery was not expected to gain a firm footing 
in these high latitudes. The South declared 
itself to be contending merely for the princi])le. 
To force upon the North the acknowledgment 
of the principle w^as, however, evidently an ut- 
terly hopeless undertaking. The slavocrats, Cal- 
houn not excepted, knew that well enough, and 
they were not such doctrinaires as to risk their 
bones in charging- windmills. Calhoun was un- 
doubtedly thoroughly convinced of the sound- 
ness of his theories, but the practical aim and 
end of his struggle for the ])rinciple was to 
wring from the North acceptable concessions 
with regard to all present and future Territories 
which were sufficiently well adapted for slave 
labor. So far from receding from the jiosition 
which he had taken in his resolutions, he now 
carried their doctrine to its last legitimate eon- 
sequence by denying the binding force of the 
former compromises. In his sj)eech of June 27, 



308 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

1848, on the Oregon bill, he said of the Mis- 
souri Compromise : — 

" A compromise line was adopted between the 
North and the South ; but it was done under circum- 
stances which made it nowise obligatory on the lat- 
ter. . . . The South has never given her sanction to 
it, or assented to the power it asserted. She was 
voted down, and has simply acquiesced in an arrange- 
ment which she has not had the power to reverse, 
and which she could not attempt to do without dis- 
turbing the peace and harmony of the Union, to 
which she has ever been averse." 

Calhoun was too candid and daring a man, he 
had too much of the fanatic, and, above all, he 
understood this question too thoroughly to ap- 
prove of the covering up and concealing of the 
depth of the antagonism which necessarily ag- 
gravated the evils. He shares with the aboli- 
tionists the merit of having always probed the 
wound to the bottom, without heeding in the 
least the protesting shrieks of the patient. The 
return of the left wing of the Northern Demo- 
crats into the service of the slavocracy was ac- 
knowledged by him with a gracious smile, but 
he si^urned the cunning device which made the 
bitter morsel palatable to the peace - craving 
masses. As his immediate purposes were served 
by it, he of course received with satisfaction the 
announcement that the reintegration of the De« 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 309 

mocratic party could and should be effected upon 
the basis of his doctrine of " non-interference." 
But no blame rested upon him for the fact that 
it was a reunion over the bottomless chasm of 
a conscious falsehood, because the " non-interfer- 
ence " as understood by the Northern Democrats 
had nothing in common with the " non-interfer- 
ence " demanded by him and the Southern radi- 
cals, except the abandonment of the right to 
have a national policy with regard to slavery 
in the Territories. When Cass and Dickinson 
now proclaimed the doctrine of squatter sover- 
eignty, the cudgel of his logic with a few strokes 
smashed into atoms the coarse and bold sophisms. 
Whatever of legislative powers the Legislatures 
or the inhabitants of the Territories had, was 
derived from an act of Congress. If, therefore, 
Congress had no right to take any action what- 
ever in respect to the introduction of slavery 
into the Territories, the former evidently could 
do so much less. Calhoun called the doctrine 
of Dickinson and Cass " the most absurd of 
all the positions ever taken." " The fii'st half 
dozen of squatters would become the sovereigns, 
with full dominion and sovereignty over them 
[the Territories] ; and the conquered people of 
New Mexico and California would become the 
sovereigns of the country, as soon as they be- 
came the Territories of the United States, vested 



310 JOHN C. CALHOUN 



with the full right of excluding even their con- 
querors." 

Calhoun's own doctrine was certainly more 
logical, and he was perfectly consistent in deny- 
ing to Congress, to the territorial Legislatures, 
and to the squatters, as well the right to estab- 
lish slavery as the right to prohibit it. But 
nevertheless his theory also had a logical hitch. 
He claimed for the slave-holders the right to 
brino: their human chattels into all the Terri- 
tories as a right wider the Constitution, but he 
did not dare to assert that the Constitution 
estahlislied slavery either in the Territories or 
anywhere else. It had, however, thus far been 
universally acknowledged that, wherever slavery 
existed, it was the creature of municipal law. 
Whence, then, should slavery derive its legal 
existence in Territories where it did not actually 
exist, or where thus far it was even expressly 
forbidden by law, as in New Mexico and Cali- 
fornia? Was it now to be denied that slavery 
could only be the creature of positive, though 
perhaps un^\'l•itten, law, — i. e., was the right 
to hold slaves in any Territory to be derived 
from the law of nature ? If so, by what process 
of losfic could this natural right be limited to 
negroes, and even to negroes who were already 
slaves in certain other places ? This course led 
no less to sheer absurdity than the doctrine of 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 311 

squatter sovereignty ; antl yet there was no 
other course, unless the Constitution was to be 
construed to establish slavery in all the Terri- 
tories. 

Conclusive as this logical hitch in the " non- 
interference " doctrine was, it dwindled down 
into absolute insignificance, when compared with 
the political absurdity of the theory. Calhoun's 
doctrine made it a solemn constitutional duty 
of the United States government and of the 
American people to act as if the existence or 
non-existence of slavery in the Territories did 
not concei-n them in the least. If they could not 
help taking an interest in it, at least that inter- 
est had to be purely academical, as if the Terri- 
tories had been situated on some distant planet. 
The question was not allowed to be a question 
at all. Yet the fact was that North and South 
were perfectly agreed in considering it the ques- 
tion, in comparison with which everything else 
was as nothing. Thus the theory and the facts 
clashed in a most ridiculous manner ; and in 
such a conflict between theory and facts the 
former has always to yield, though it be wi-itten 
in giant letters and with living fire in the Con- 
stitution. No people with the least vestige of 
political vitality ever will or can turn their backs 
upon a question which they consider of jmra- 
mount importance to their whole future, look 



312 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

at the sky and whistle, because the Constitution 
says that the matter must not be touched ever 
so lightly with a single finger. And if the 
Constitution does not say that in so many words, 
but only an endless string of hotly contested 
assertions, deductions, and conclusions leads to 
this result, then the sole effect will be that 
another huge monument of human folly has been 
erected. 

Nothing shows in so drastic a light the fearful 
embarrassment into which the policy of terri- 
torial aggrandizement had thrown the country 
as the recommendation of a committee of the 
Senate to solve the problem by adopting this 
ostrich policy. On July 18, 1848, Mr. Clayton, 
with the consent of Calhoun, who was a member 
of the select committee, introduced a compromise 
bill, which acknowledged the provisional laws of 
Oregon " till the territorial Legislature could 
enact some law on the subject of slavery." New 
Mexico and California were to be organized as 
Territories by the appointment of a governor, 
secretary, and judges, to compose a temporary 
Legislature, " but without the power to legislate 
on the subject of slavery ; thus placing that 
question beyond the power of the territorial 
Legislature, and resting the right to introduce 
or prohibit slavery in these two Territories on 
the Constitution, as the same should be ex- 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 313 

pounded by the judges, with a right of appeal to 
the Supreme Court of the United States. It 
was thought that by this means Congress would 
avoid the decision of this distracting question, 
leaving it to be settled by the silent operation 
of the Constitution itself." 

By acquiescing in this arrangement, Calhoun 
abandoned his position on the " rock " of the 
Constitution, and took once more the old track 
of compromises. No better proof can be exacted 
that he had claimed all in order to get enough. 
But this comparative moderation was not yet to 
be rewarded. Even Democratic organs emphati- 
cally protested against " the cowardly conduct of 
Congress in seeking to shove [the responsibility 
of the decision] upon the Supreme Court." By 
the Senate the bill was passed, but in the House 
it was laid on the table, on motion of Alexander 
H. Stephens. Calhoun was of course free to 
climb again to the top round of the ladder of 
principle, but his doing so could no longer pro- 
duce the same effect as hei'etofore. He knew 
this well enough, and his discomfiture was the 
greater because a leading Southerner had felt 
himself called upon to move the rejection of the 
compromise. The consolidation of the South 
on the basis of the slavery question had indeed 
so far been effected that every Southerner 
peremptorily demanded for his section some 



314 JOHN C. IpALHOUN 

share of the Mexican s^ils ; but the represen- 
tatives of the South were very far from being 
ao-reed as to the aro:uments on which to rest 
the claims, or as to the means with which their 
realization should be attempted. Calhoun had 
yet one arrow left in his quiver, and he did not 
hesitate to take it out ; but its point was broken 
off by Southern hands ere he could shoot it. 

After a most tenacious resistance on the part 
of the Senate, the first session of the 30th 
Congress was brought to a close by the passage 
of the Oreo;on bill as it had come from the 
House ; that is, with the exclusion of slavery. 
California and New Mexico, however, had re- 
mained unorganized. The rapid and most ab- 
normal development of the former, in conse- 
quence of the discovery of gold, imperiously 
demanded that Congress should at last do its 
duty towards the newly acquired possession. 
From all sides the cry was raised that it was 
a shame and an inexcusable wrong to give up 
the Territory to anarchy, because Congress 
would not come to a decision on the slavery 
question. But there seemed to be little chance 
that the knot would be unravelled by this Con- 
gress at its second session. The South showed 
no more disposition to yield than before, and 
the North had good reason to hope that a de- 
cisive victory could be gained, if it but braced 



/ 



OREGON AND (IRil MEXICAN WAR 315 

up its strength aiK? persisted. Ciilifornia had 
.as yet only two newspapers, and Loth declared 
that the population was unanimously of opinion 
that '•'■ the simple recognition of slavery " in the 
Territory would he the greatest misfortune. 
"The people of New Mexico, in convention 
assembled " at Santa Fe, sent a petition to 
Congress, emphatically asking protection against 
the introduction of slaves. Calhoun called the 
petition most impudent, and Westcott thought 
it an abuse of the right of petition. But that 
did not change the fact that, if the introduction 
of slaves into these Territories should be per- 
mitted, it would be done against the solemn 
protests of the inhabitants. Squatter sover- 
eignty, however, was the utmost limit to which 
the Democratic politicians of the North could 
hope to lead their constituents in the service of 
the slavocraey. The determined opponents of 
the slave power, therefore, felt sufficiently elated 
to take the offensive. In the House of Eepre- 
sentatives, several motions with a view to the 
abolition of the slave-trade, and even of slavery 
itself in the District of Columbia, were made, 
and it was with some difficulty that the more 
moderate of these attacks were repelled by the 
South. 

These signs of the times appeared to Calhoun 
so ominous that he deemed it necessary to 



316 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

prove to the North by an extraordinary demon- 
stration that in this question the South thought, 
and eventually would act, as one man. At his 
instigation, sixty-nine senators and representa- 
tives from the South met for deliberation on 
December 23, 1848, in the Senate chamber. A 
committee of fifteen was appointed, which ap- 
pointed a sub-committee to draw up an address. 
When this sub-committee met, Calhoun sub- 
mitted to it the draft of an " Address of the 
Southern Delegates in Congress to their Con- 
stituents." Of its object the address itself said 
that it " is to give you a clear, correct, but 
brief account of the whole series of aggressions 
and encroachments on your rights, with a state- 
ment of the dangers to which they expose you. 
Our object in making it is not to cause excite- 
ment, but to put you in full possession of all 
the facts and circvunstances necessary to a full 
and just conception of a deep-seated disease, 
which threatens great danger to you and the 
whole body politic." It did not pretend to 
have any new facts or arguments to lay before 
the people. It was throughout the old story, 
which, in and out of Congress, had been re- 
peated many thousand times. Nevertheless, a 
short recapitulation of it in calm but incisive 
and even bitter language could of course pro- 
duce a great effect. Calhoun, however, did not 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 317 

rely principally on that. The fact in itself, 
that all the Southern members of Con<rress 
united in addressing their constituents in such 
a solemn form, was to make an overpowering 
impression not only on the South, but also on 
the North. Men of all i)arties believed that his 
designs went much farther and were of much 
darker complexion. The old charge was re- 
newed that he was driving directly at a dissolu- 
tion of the Union, and some of the accusers had 
evidently some apprehension that this time he 
might possibly succeed. So far as his wishes 
were concerned, however, the suspicion was 
now as unfounded as it had been on all former 
occasions. The possibility — and, in his opin- 
ion, perhaps no more an improbable one — of 
the withdrawal of the slave-holdinof States from 
the Union, he kept steadily in view. There is 
no question about that, for he had often de- 
clared it in express words, and he had not now 
made the concession to his more moderate col- 
leagues to conceal it in the least in the address. 
As the address was to impress the people with 
the gravity of the crisis, it was a matter of 
course that this eventuality had to be pointed 
to in a forcible manner. Nay, more. One of his 
purposes undoubtedly was to prepare the South 
for it, and to make the South equal to the emer- 
gency, if it should come to the worst. But a 



318 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

calm and attentive perusal of the curious docu- 
ment cannot fail to satisfy every reader that 
its main object was exactly to prevent this dire 
eventuality from becoming an actuality. 

The assertion that if the North was allowed 
"to monopolize all the Territories" "she would 
emancipate our slaves, luider the color of an 
amendment of the Constitution," and then the 
white population would " change conditions " 
with the slaves, absolutely excluded the possi- 
bility of submission, if all the Territories should 
be closed to slavery by the verdict of the ma- 
jority. " As the assailed you would stand jus- 
tified by all laws, human and divine, in repel- 
ling a blow so dangerous, without looking to 
consequences, and to resort to all means neces- 
sary for that purpose." But, at the same time, 
the address declared it probable that the calam- 
ity could still be averted by the South. " If 
you become united, and prove yourselves to be 
in earnest, the North will be brought to a 
pause, and to a calculation of consequences; 
and that may lead to a change of measures, and 
the adojDtion of a course of policy that may 
quietly and peaceably terminate this long con- 
flict between the two sections." This expecta- 
tion caused Calhoun to leave the last decisive 
word unpronounced. He had no positive mea- 
sures of any kind whatever to propose. The ad- 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 'MO 

dress, so to speak, lacked an end. It was a long 
string- of premises, which suddeidy broke off 
without a conclusion. All the advice it had to 
give was, " We earnestly entreat you to be 
united, and for that pnr])ose to ado])t all neces- 
sary measures. Beyond this, we think it would 
not be proper to go at present." 

On January 13, 1849, the sub-committee re- 
ported to the committee of fifteen. A long and 
animated debate ensued. The Whig members 
showed very little inclination to follow the lead 
of Calhoun, and they afterwards avowed that 
they had consented to help dig the mine only 
in order to pour water on his powder. The ad- 
dress was adopted with a majority of but one 
vote. Two days later, over eighty members of 
Congress met and deliberated with closed doors. 
Considerable excitement prevailed in Washing- 
ton, for " many of the most intelligent men " 
believed, as Horace Maun wrote on the same 
day, that " Mr. Calhoun is resolved on a disso- 
lution of the Union." They were mistaken. 
" We hope that, if you should unite with any- 
thing like unanimity, this may of itself apply a 
remedy to this deep-seated and dangerous dis- 
ease ; but if such should not be the case, the 
time will then have come for you to decide 
what course to adopt." This last paragraph 
of the address stated with perfect truthfulness 



320 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

what he Intended. To unite the South, — that 
was his purpose, neither more nor less, — to 
unite the South for good or for evil, as the case 
might be. He " Ao7:>ef/ " that the North would 
yield when it should be convinced, by the una- 
nimity of the South, that " the refusal of jus- 
tice " would be promptly followed by the disso- 
lution of the Union. This calculation was not 
to be submitted to the test of facts. Washing- 
ton's anxious expectations came post festum. 
The reception which the address had met from 
the committee had already proved that the 
South could not as yet be united on the slavery 
question in such a manner that thereby the 
Union could either be saved or destroyed. The 
attempt to form a Southern party had com- 
pletely failed. The address was finally issued, 
but anion ir the sionatures were the names of 
only two Whigs, while even several Democrats 
had refused to sign it. The whole number of 
signatures was forty, just enough to save the 
movement from ridicule. 

If the private corresj^ondence of Calhoun 
should still exist, and some time see the light, 
we shall perhaps be authentically informed of 
the effect which this signal and probably un- 
expected defeat had on his mind. His public 
utterances contain no explicit answer to this 
question. But we can form a conception, prob- 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 321 

ably nearly correct, of his frame of mind, if we 
direct our attention principally to what he did 
not say and do. Nothing betrays tlie least per- 
sonal disappointment. There is left hardly a 
glimmering spark of the fire of ambition, which 
once burned so fiercely in his bosom, for he 
knows that he stands on the brink of the gTave. 
He is wholly and exclusively devoted to the 
cause with which he has absolutely identified 
himself. As faithful and determined as ever, 
he stands at what he considers his post of duty, 
— of duty towards his section, and therefore 
also towards the Union. Every device calcu- 
lated to hinder the North yet a little longer in 
securing a " monopoly " of all the Territories, or 
to open a new chance to the South, by means 
direct or indirect, could count upon his earnest 
support, provided it appeared to him not dero- 
gatory to the honor of the South, and to promise 
at least a postponement of the evil day, on 
which the balance of power would be irretriev- 
ably lost. Once (February 24, 1849) he had a 
sharp passage of arms with Webster on the ques- 
tion whether the Constitution extends of itself to 
the Territories, and it was one of the strangest 
incidents in the strange story of the slavery con- 
flict and states-rightism, to see the affirmative of 
this proposition sustained by the "great nulli- 
fier" against the great "defender of the Con- 



322 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

stitution." Upon the whole, he unquestionably 
got the better of his antagonist in this contest, 
which, short as it was, fully proved that his 
mental vigor was absolutely uninijjaired. Yet a 
certain languor had evidently taken possession 
of him. The last weeks of the 30th Congress 
were the stormiest of Polk's stormy administra- 
tion, but Calhoun refrained from increasing the 
excitement by a set speech. He had nothing 
new either to say or to propose. Too deeply 
was he convinced of the justice of his cause to 
despair of its ultimate triumph ; but care sat 
heavily on his brow, for nothing would silence 
the voice which night and day whispered the 
maddening question into his ear. How is this all 
to end? Every day he found himself less able 
to answer the problem. Yet there was no halt- 
ing ; for something must be done, and he had 
become thoroughly convinced that nothing more 
was to be expected from Congress, unless an ir- 
resistible pressure from outside was brought to 
bear upon it. The time had come to write the 
omitted end of the " Address of the Southern 
Delegates in Congress to their Constituents," 
— to draw the practical conclusion from the 
premises therein enunciated. 

The public did not know what share he had 
in the new movement. Even a leading politi- 
cian like Henry S. Foote had no knowledge of 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 323 

it, though he himself was one of the jji-incipal 
instnunents in the hands of Calhoun. So late 
as February 8, 1850, Foote indignantly rebuked 
Senator Houston for intiniatiu''- that "the sov- 
ereign State of Mississippi, in the inei})ient 
movement towards the Nashville Convention, 
. . . was instigated by South Carolina, or lier 
statesmen." And he added, " I know that what 
he has said will be understood as intimating,' 
at least, that this Conventional movement of 
ours was stimulated by South Carolina, and was 
the result of concert between certain South 
Carolina politicians and certain politicians in 
Mississippi, with a view of having that move- 
ment originate in the State of Mississippi in- 
stead of South Carolina, in order to avoid any 
odium that might thereby arise. I am sure he 
did not intend to be so understood, and yet he 
will be, if he does not correct his remarks." Mr. 
Houston replied, " I can assure the honorable 
senator that this is a very delicate and com- 
plicated question. But I believe that if South 
Carolina had never existed, and if it had not 
been for her disposition and the movement 
which began there, .Mississippi would never 
have thought of it," The senator from Texas 
probably was not himself fully aware at the 
time how true this assertion was. In Decem- 
ber, 1851, Foote had to retract his former pa* 



324 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

sionate and hauglity disclaimer, and to excuse 
himself by stating tliat, at that time, " I did not 
believe that any human being in the world had 
received a letter from Mr. Calhoun on the sub- 
ject, except one which I myself received." He 
now had to avow not only that Calhoun had 
"had a pretty extensive correspondence with 
persons " in Mississippi, but also that his 
""(Foote's) mind had become satisfied by the pe- 
rusal of these letters " that the modus operandi 
of the Convention was more or less marked out 
by his great intellect." Nay, he even declared 
with considerable pride, "It was through me, 
in the first instance, that Mr. Calhoun suc- 
ceeded in instigating the incipient movements 
in Mississippi, which led to the calling of the 
Nashville Convention." 

Foote, in the above-quoted rejoinder to Mr. 
Houston, has stated correctly the reason which 
prompted Calhoun to assign the part of ostensi- 
ble leader to Mississippi, and which made him 
so anxious not to let anybody see that his hand 
held and pulled all the wires. The best proof 
of the consummate skill with which he played 
his game is the fact that even the chief actors 
had not the slightest suspicion of their being 
but tools in his hands. The details of the in- 
trigue are not likely ever to be unveiled, because 
the greatest part of that secret correspondence 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 325 

is probably no more in existence. The loss is, 
however, of comparatively little imi)ortaiice, as 
one of those letters, — dated July 9, 1849, and 
addressed to Collin S. Tar})ley, of Mississippi, 
— which came to light some time after his 
death, fully informs us about his intentions. He 
says : — 

" In my opinion there is but one thing that holds 
out the promise of saving both ourselves and the 
Union, and that is a Southern convention ; and that, 
if much longer delayed, cannot. It ought to have 
been held this fall, and ought not to be delayed be- 
yond another year. Ail our movements ought to 
look to that result. For that purpose, every South- 
ern State ought to be organized with a central com- 
mittee, and one in each county. Ours is already. It 
is indispensable to produce concert and prompt ac- 
tion. In the mean time, firm and resolute resolutions 
ought to be adopted by yours, and such meetings as 
may take place before the assembling of the Legis- 
latures in the fall. They, when they meet, ought to 
take up the subject in the most solemn and impressive 
manner. 

"The great object of a Southern convention should 
be to put forth, in a solemn manner, the causes of 
our grievances in an address to the other States, and 
to admonish them, in a solemn manner, as to the con- 
sequences which must follow, if they should not be 
redressed, and to take measures preparatory to it, in 
case they should not be. The call should be ad 



326 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

dressed to all those who are desirous to save the 
Union and our institutions, and who, in the alterna- 
tive, should it be forced on us, of submission or dis- 
solving the partnership, would prefer the latter. 

" No State could better take the lead in this con- 
servative movement than yours. It is destined to be 
the greatest of sufferers if the abolitionists should 
succeed ; and I am not certain but by the time your 
convention meets, or at farthest your Legislature, 
that the time will have come to make the call." 

It is tlie old programme ; only the way of 
executing it is somewhat changed, and changed 
exactly in the manner which he had repeatedly 
pointed out in his speeches and addresses. It 
was another attempt to save the Union, but, at 
the same time, another step forward towards 
its final dissolution, if the North should persist 
in rejecting the conditions of the South. Cal- 
houn's last great speech in the Senate proves 
that he had not intended the Nashville Con- 
vention to present an ultimatum to the North, 
though, for greater effect, he had perhaps 
wished to see its propositions clad in the most 
peremptory language. Whether or not he would 
have liked to come at once to " an end with ter- 
ror " rather than to endure still longer " the 
terror without end," he knew that the South 
was not yet ready to act. Therefore he did not 
expect from the Nashville Convention what the 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 327 

faint-hearted and weak-kneed peace fanatics of 
the North apprehended from it, and it was very 
far from fulfilling even what he expected, lie 
did not live to drink this new cup of bitter- 
ness, but he lived long enouiih not to derive 
any consolation from the vain hope that this 
last attempt to save the Union by rendering 
slavery absolutely safe in the Union woidd be 
successful. His eyes were too keen not to see 
tlie fast-accumidating indications that another 
disappointment — more bitter than all the dis- 
appointments he had experienced heretofore — 
was in store for him. His weary limbs longed 
to stretch out and rest, but he knew only too 
well that so long as his mortal eyes saw the 
light of the sun there was no rest for him. By 
their very keenness, these eyes became his worst 
tormentors. 

How often had he told the country that, by 
everything dear to man and making life worth 
living, the South would be com])elled to sever 
its connection with the North, if its equal rights 
in the Territories were not recognized I But he 
had never ventured to assert that, if this were 
done, the peace of the country could never 
again be disturbed by the slavery question, be- 
cause slavery would thereby be absolutely se- 
cured against all attacks. His arguments were 
always presented in such an ingenious form 



328 JOIIX C. CALHOUN" 

that to the bhmt logic of many of his hearers 
this woukl appear to be the self-evident conclu- 
sion ; but though he certainly deceived himself 
to some extent in this respect, he had never di- 
rectly and expressly asserted the fact. On the 
contrary, all his speeches were replete with ir- 
refutable arguments, proving that the slavery 
question could not be decreed out of existence, 
because the moral, economical, and political an- 
tagonism between slavery and freedom was a 
fact^ and would assert itself as a fact in all eter- 
nity. The people, therefore, neither would nor 
could acquiesce in it, if Congress should attempt 
to ignore it, or even forbid noticing it. No mat- 
ter how high the " peculiar institution " was 
place<l on " the rock of the Constitution," the 
waves of the sea of facts unceasingly beat against 
it, and gradually washed it away. 

In his great speech on the Oregon question 
(March 16, 1846), Calhoun had said : — 

" But I oppose war, not simply on the patriotic 
ground of a citizen looking to the freedom and pro- 
sperity of his own country, but on still broader grounds, 
as a friend of improvement, civilization, and progress. 
Viewed in reference to them, at no period has it ever 
been so desirable to preserve the general peace which 
now blesses the world. Never in its history has a 
period occurred so remarkable as that which has 
elapsed since the termination of the great war in Eu- 



OREGON AND THE IMEXICAN WAR 329 

rope with the battle of Watoiloo, for the great ad- 
vances made in all these particulars. Chemical and 
mechanical discoveries and inventions havo multiplied 
beyond all former example, — adding, with their ad- 
vance, to the comforts of life in a degree far greater 
and more nniversal than all that was ever known be- 
fore. Civilization has, during the same period, spread 
its influence far and wide, and the general jjrogress iu 
knowledge, and its diffusion through all ranks of soci- 
ety, has outstrijiped all that has ever gone before it. 
The two great agents of the physical world have be- 
come subject to the will of man, and have been made 
subservient to his wants and enjoyments ; I alhule to 
steam and electricity, under whatever name the latter 
may be called. The former has overcome distance 
both on land and water, to an extent which former 
generations had not the least concei)tion was possible. 
It has, in effect, reduced the Atlantic to half its for- 
mer width, while, at the same time, it has added three- 
fold to the rapidity of intercourse by land. Within 
the same period, electricity, the greatest and most dif- 
fuse of all known })hysical agents, has been made the 
instrument for the transmission of thought, I will not 
say with the rapidity of lightning, but by lightning 
itself. Masric wires are stretching themselves in all 
directions over the earth, and when their mystic 
meshes shall have been united and perfected our 
globe itself will become endowed with sensitiveness, 
so that whatever touches on any one point will be in- 
stantly felt on every other. All these improvements, 
all this increasing civilization, all the progress now 



330 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

making, would be in a great measure arrested by a 
war between us and Great Britain. As great as it is, 
it is but the commencement, the dawn of a new civili- 
zation, more refined, more elevated, more intellectual, 
more moral, than the present and all preceding it. 
Shall it be we who shall incur the high responsibility 
of retarding its advance ? " 

Could he altogether refuse to see how much 
the advance of this new civilization was re- 
tarded by the " peculiar institution " ? The 
niost exaggerated eulogies on its conservative 
virtues coukl not banish from his sight the 
glaring contrasts between the two sections; 
the most positive assertion that these were 
wholly due to the unjust and unconstitutional 
economical policy of the Federal government 
could not conceal the fact that, no matter what 
this policy was with regard to tariffs and inter- 
nal improvements, these contrasts became more 
glaring every year. No ingenuity, displayed in 
the attempt to prove that the North would lose 
infinitely more by a disruption of the Union 
than the South, could disprove the fact that 
these contrasts indicated the increasing weak- 
ness of the South, not only morally and politi- 
cally, as he had himself avowed, but in every 
respect ; no prophecy that, after the breaking 
up of the Union, the economical development 
of the unfettered South would be unparalleled. 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 331 

could cover uj) tlio fact that whatever touched 
any one point of the civilized ])art of the gh)he 
n^as instantly felt on every other, and that this 
economical, moral, and mental consoliiUition of 
the civilized world rendered the jjerpetuation 
of the " peculiar institution " impossible, be- 
cause slavery, whether in itself "i^ood or bad, 
grew every day more incompatible with all the 
laws governing the life of this civilized world. 
Much duller eyes than his had begun long ago 
to be struck and alarmed by the fast-aceunui- 
lating proofs of this all-im])ortant fact, fur- 
nished by the under-currents in the slave-hold- 
ing States themselves. The non-slave-holders 
had begun to doubt the heretofore unques- 
tioned identity of their interests with those of 
the slave-holders. In the border States the old 
creed was revived that slavery was a " mil- 
dew" and a "curse;" in some of them an 
earnest agitation for its gradual extinction 
was entered upon. The old cotton States, and 
among them principally South Carolina, not 
only bitterly complained of the heavy drafts 
which the emigration as well to the northwest- 
ern as to the Mississippi States constantly made 
upon their wealth and their population, but 
they also saw the day approach on which a 
modified abolitionism would boldly raise its 
head actually among themselves, if nothing 



332 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

should be done to improve the miserable condi- 
tion of their poor white people. But all the 
proposed remedies proved, upon closer examina- 
tion, to be deadly poisons. The man who had 
been the zealous advocate of the first great 
Southern raih-oad, and who still bitterly ac- 
cused the Federal government of having crip- 
pled the South economically, now gave it as 
his opinion that the South would commit suicide 
by introducing factories and stimulating all 
sorts of industrial pursuits, because the artisan 
and mechanic are born enemies of slavery. 

All this could not shake in the least Calhoun's 
conviction that slavery was " a good, a positive 
good." But how could he have seen all this, 
and failed to perceive that, even if all the Ter- 
ritories were thrown open to the slave-holders, 
the " peculiar institution " would be as far as 
ever from being safely anchored in haven ? The 
future was still completely hidden from his view, 
and had forever to remain so ; for, as his theory 
of slavery had become with him a dogma., he 
was determined not to see it, and had become 
incapable of seeing it, unless he lived to see the 
dogma crushed by the accomplished facts. But 
he could not help seeing that the entanglements 
of the slavery question grew ever more laby- 
rinthine, and he could not help feeling that the 
whole ground was thickly strewn with thorns. 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 333 

Wearily lie turned away from the facts, which 
he neither would nor could understand any 
more. 

The 30th Conji^ress had expired, leaving the 
question of the disposal of the newly ac(|uired 
Territories where it had found it, and a \\'hi<^ 
President had taken possession of the AN'hite 
House. Nine long months the peoi)le had to 
go about their business in this thick and sul- 
try political atmosphere, ere their law-makers 
returned once more to the well-nigh hoi)eless 
task of solving this problem, Calhoun did not 
pass this time in idleness. The world of stub- 
born facts he had been unable to master, but 
he still thought himself able to prove on paper 
that he was nevertheless right. In these months, 
the " Disquisition on Government " and the 
" Discourse on the Constitution and Govern- 
ment of the United States " were in the main, 
if not entirely, penned. That he expected to 
exercise an influence on the decision of the im- 
pending question by these essays is hardly to be 
supposed. His idea seems rather to have been 
to leave an authentic exposition of his political 
creed as a political testament and solemn warn- 
ing to posterity. At all events, it is only in this 
quality that they can claim a place in the his- 
tory of the United States. Unlike so many of 
his speeches, they were not political deeds, and 



334 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

did not help to shape the course of events. Be- 
sides, when they appeared in print, he ah*eady 
rested in his grave, and every day the futility 
of the attempt to smooth down the wild break- 
ers of realities by pouring on the oil of ab- 
stract theories became more apj^arent. To the 
student, these two essays will always remain 
among the most curious books of the political 
literature of the United States, and they may 
be read with great profit, though for the most 
part not exactly in the spirit intended by the 
author. Tlie people have passed judgment on 
them without reading them ; and have repu- 
diated states-rightism, as Calhoun understood 
it, that is, state supremacy, as emphatically as 
they have repudiated the doctrine of the " posi- 
tive good " of slavery. 

When the 31st Congress met, December 3, 
1849, the slavocracy was smarting under a de- 
feat, tlie importance of which could not be 
overestimated. California, with the informal 
sanction of the President, but without any au- 
thorization from Congress, had adoj^ted a state 
Constitution ])rohibiting slavery and involuntary 
servitude, and this clause had received the unan- 
imous vote of the constitutional convention, 
although many of its members were Southern- 
ers. This was a conunentary on the doctrine 
of the " positive good " of slavery which told 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAK 335 

more than all tlie abolition speeches ever made. 
California was irretrievably lost to the slavo- 
craey, for to think that Congress eonld be eoni- 
pelleil to force slavery ujjon her wonld have 
been sheer madness. Therefore it had become 
only the more necessary to struggle with the 
utmost energy for the rest of the Mexican 
booty, and for the principle, upon the acknow- 
ledgment of which those Territories which might 
be acquired at some future time could depend. 
The formal irregularities with which the pro- 
ceedings in California were tainted furnished 
the South with a position of sufficient tactical 
strength to continue the struggle, with the ho])e 
that, after all, the strenuous exertions would be 
ultimately rewarded at least by a partial suc- 
cess. California was not to be admitted into 
the Union as a State until the North had 
made satisfactory concessions on all the other 
controverted points. At last, the slavocracy was 
apparently unanimous in the determination "to 
resist the aggressions of the North " to tlie last 
extremity. In the House of Kepresentatives, 
the very same Southern Whigs who liad so 
recently defeated Calhoun in his attempt to 
form a Southern party seemed ambitious to 
assume the leadership of the " fire-eaters." The 
ciffantic edifice of the Union trembled to its 
very foundations, and, for a while, many patri- 



\ 

336 JOHN C. CALHV)UN 

ots hardly dared hope that ^ts proud pillars 
could be steadied once more. Week after week, 
the storm of debate raged on with unabated 
fui-y. Now and then the dark clouds were torn 
by a compromise propooition, but in the next 
moment they were again blown together by a 
counter-blast, and the darkness seemed but the 
greater for the passing ray of light. 

No one watched the progress of the storm 
with intenser interest than Calhoun, though 
his voice had as yet hardly been heard at all in 
the Senate hall. The hand of death lay heavily 
on his shoulder. His body was sadly bent un- 
der its weight, so that the tears involuntarily 
pressed into the eyes of those who remembered 
what an image of strong and noble manhood 
he had been. A dying man he was, though his 
mental faculties were still unimpaired. But it 
was not hope that fed the flickering flame of 
his mind, so that it shone to the last in all its 
original brightness. The knitted brows and 
the deep lines, which care had chiselled into his 
fleshless face, told with most impressive elo- 
quence with what a heavy load he stepped into 
his grave. Two years ago he had repelled 
the charges of Mr. Turney with the proud as- 
sertion, " For many a long year, Mr. President, 
I have aspired to an object far higher than the 
presidency; that is, doing my duty under all 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 337 

circumstances, in every trial, irrespective of 
parties, and witlfcut regard to friendsiiips or 
enmities, but siurply in reference to the pro- 
sperity of the country." The sense of duty was 
now the strong staff on which the expiring 
man leaned, amd his iron will bade death stay 
its hand till he had done and the country had 
heard his parting words. Surely, he had a 
right to demand that the country should at- 
tentively listen to them. Now nobody could 
accuse him of being actuated by presidential 
aspirations, and his most embittered adversary 
could not dare to intimate that he was a fiend 
in human shape, who would willingly and wit- 
tingly kindle with his dying hand a fire which 
was to consume his country's peace, prosperity, 
and glory. Perhaps his political testament con- 
tained the best prdbf that what he had i)ro- 
claimed to be white was black, and that what 
to him appeared black was white, but he cer- 
tainly revealed in it his solemn conviction, and 
he could not have anything in view but what, 
in his innermost heart, he believed to be con- 
ducive to the true welfare of his country. 

Calhoun had suffered for some time from an 
acute pulmonary affection, which had recently 
become aggravated by a heart disease. He him- 
self was no more able to address the Senate for 
any length of time. On March 4, 1850, his 



338 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

carefullj'^ prepared speech was read by Mr. Ma- 
son, of Virginia, to the Senate. Every senator 
listened with profound attention and unfeigned 
emotion ; the galleries were hushed into tho 
deepest silence by the extraordinary scene-g 
which had something of the impressive solemn, 
nity of a funeral ceremony. 

" I have, senators, believed from the first that 
the agitation of the subject of slavery would,, if 
not prevented by some timely and effective mea- 
sure, end in disunion." What a melancholy sat- 
isfaction for the man who, for nearly forty years, 
had been one of the brightest stars of the Federal 
government, in one capacity or another, thus to 
open his last speech ! He had contributed his 
full share to the glory and greatness of the re- 
public, and now the last question which he had 
to argue in the Federal Capitol was, " How can 
the Union be preserved ? " Every line of the 
speech bears witness how thoroughly he himself 
is pervaded by the consciousness that it is " the 
greatest and the gravest question that can ever 
come under your consideration." Every word 
is carefully weighed ; not one syllable of angry 
and passionate declamation is to be found in 
it, — nothing that the most sensitive mind can 
construe into a threat. A " widely diffused and 
almost universal discontent " pervades the South- 
ern States, caused by the belief " that they can* 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 3.^0 

not remain, as things now are, consistently with 
honor and safety in the Union," because " the 
equilibrium between the two sections . . . has 
been destroyed," — these undeniable facts are 
the basis of his argument. lie admits that if 
this destruction of the equilibrium had been 
" the operation of time, without the interference 
of government, the South would have no reason 
to complain ; " but he denies that such is the 
fact. 

The facts and assertions on which he based 
this denial are familiar to us, and therefore 
need not be repeated here. Nor is it necessary 
to recapitulate his version of the story of the 
anti-slavery movement, and the reasons why this 
hostility of the North to the "peculiar insti- 
tution " would inevitably subject the Southern 
States " to poverty, desolation, and wretched- 
ness," after " all the power of the system " had 
been concentrated in the Federal government, 
and the North had " acquired a decided ascend- 
ency over every department of this goverinnent." 
He declared " the views and feelings of the two 
sections " in reference to slavery to be " as op- 
posite and hostile as they can possibly be," and 
he avowed once more that " all the elements of 
influence on the part of the South are weaker," 
while " all the elements in favor of [the anti-sla- 
very] agitation are stronger now than they were 



340 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

in 1835, when it first commenced." He there- 
fore asked, '"■ Is it, then, not certain that, if 
something- is not done to arrest it, the South 
will be forced to choose between abolition and 
secession ? " And he added, '• Indeed, as events 
are now moving, it will not require the South to 
secede, in order to dissolve the Union. Agita- 
tion will of itself effect it, of which its past his- 
tory furnishes abundant proof." 

This startling assertion was probably deemed 
by many one of those wild exaggerations, ver- 
ging upon the absurd, of which he had so often 
been guilty in the eyes of all the moderates and 
conserv^atives. Upon more mature reflection it 
could, however, not be denied that the split in 
several of the great religious denominations, to 
which he principally alluded, went far to warn 
the people that this opinion was not a day- 
dream of the diseased imagination of a fanatic. 
Just now he proved, in a manner most unex- 
pected to most of his hearers, that he judged the 
situation with more calmness and sobriety of 
mind than the great majority of them. " It is 
a great mistake," he said, " to suppose that dis- 
union can be effected by a single blow. The 
cords which bound these States together in one 
common Union are far too numerous and pow- 
erful for that. Disunion must be the work of 
time. It is only through a long process, and 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR .141 

successively, that tlie cords can be siiajtiicd, un- 
til the whole fabric falls asunder.'' The history 
of the next ten years decided in an lunnistaka- 
ble manner the question whether he was right, 
or those who thought that the 31st Conjrress 
would be the last of the old Union. At the 
same time, the sentences just quoted are proof 
absolute of the injustice of the accusation that 
Callioun was consciously aiming at the dissolu- 
tion of the Union, in order to become President 
of a part, since he could not become l*resident 
of the whole. Even if he had been such a black 
traitor at heart, he knew that his foul designs 
could not be executed in time to gratify such a 
mad and petty ambition. Who can tell what 
" the second volume of the history of the United 
States under the Constitution " would contain, 
if the conservatives of the North had known as 
well as he knew how strong the Union was? 
He was no more thoroughly convinced of the 
inevitability of its disruption than of the impos- 
sibility to " snap the cords " in this moment and 
by one blow. And so far from wishing that it 
could or should be done, his last bequest to his 
country was an answer to the question how the 
Union could and should be saved. 

Ere h^ proceeded to answer this question, he 
stated how it coiUd not be done. " Nor can the 
plan proposed by the distinguished senator from 



M2 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Kentucky [Henry Clay], nor that of the ad- 
ministration, save the Union." The course of 
events has proved the correctness of this opin- 
ion. Such compromises could postpone the evil 
day, but the catastrophe became only the more 
certain and terrible. No more coidd eulogies 
on the Union and appeals to AVashington's 
warnings in his Farewell Address avert the 
danger. '• The cry of • Union. Union, — the 
glorious Union I ' can no more prevent disunion 
than the cry of ' Health, health. — glorious 
health I ' on the part of the physician, can save 
a patient lying dangerously ill." The only way 
to cure the disease was to remove its causes. 
Sure enough : but could that be done ? He 
answered, " Yes, easily ; not by the weaker 
party, for it can of itself do nothing, — not even 
protect itself, — but by the stronger. The North 
has only to will it to accomplish it ; to do justice 
by conceding to the South an equal right in the 
acquired territory, and to do her duty by causing 
the stipulations relative to fugitive slaves to be 
faithfully fulfilled : to cease the agitation of the 
slavery question, and to provide for the insertion 
of a provision in the Constitution, by an amend- 
ment, which will restore to the South, in sub- 
stance, the power she possessed of protecting her- 
self, before the equilibrium between the sections 
was destroyed by the action of this government." 



OREGON AND THE I^IEXICAN WAR 313 

Now, if that was needed to save the Union, 
and nothing less would do, then the Union could 
not be saved. For the first time, Calhoun 
directly asserted that, if the North would but 
follow his- advice, " discontent will cease ; har- 
mony and kind feelings between the sections be 
restored, and every apprehension of danger to 
the Union removed ; " and he followed up this 
assertion by demanding what was in the strict- 
est sense of the word impossible. The members 
of Congress from the North could not only con- 
cede to the South an equal right in the acquired 
territory, but even abandon it entirely to the 
slavocracy, and they could bid the people de- 
liver fugitive slaves "with alacrity," as Webster 
afterwards did ; but the North could not cease 
agitating the slave question, because it could 
not loill it. It was a question^ as Calhoun him- 
self had correctly called it, and it is a physical 
impossibility to ivill a great economical, moral, 
and political question out of existence ; and if 
it had not been physically impossible, the North 
could not have overcome the moral imjmssibility 
to will what it actually did not will ; that is to 
say, she could not will to change or annihilate 
her economical, moral, and political convictions 
relative to slavery, — she could not will it, sim- 
ply because they were convictions. 

Nor is that all. Callioun did not say in 



344 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

his speecli how the Constitution ought to be 
amended, in order to restore and secure to the 
South, for all time to come, the lost equilibrium, 
but the answer to this question is to be found 
in the second of the above-mentioned essays. 
He had the candor there to admit that a con- 
stitutional amendment would in itself not be 
sufficient. The necessary preliminary step was 
to expunge from the statute-book all the laws 
by which the Federal Union of the Constitution 
had been changed into a national Union. Sup- 
pose this was granted : would the actual con- 
solidation of the Union, with its nationalizing 
tendencies, which had been uninterruptedly going 
on ever since the adoption of the Constitution, 
be also wiped away thereby? Calhoun took 
good care not to propound this question. He 
confined himself to the statement that the lost 
equilibrium between the two sections could not 
be thus restored. But if it was impossible to 
undo what had been done, it was at least possible 
to prevent the sins of the past from having any 
practical effect in the future. This he proposed 
to do by giving to the weaker section " a negative 
on the action of the [Federal] government." He 
admitted that the government might thereby 
"lose something in promptitude of action,'' but 
he asserted that, " instead of being weakened," 
it would be "greatly strengthened," for it would 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR Slj 

"gain vastly in moral power." As the surest 
and simplest of the various ways in which the 
desired object could be effected, he reconniiended 
a reorganization of the executive power, 

" so that its powers, instead of being vested, as they 
now are, in a single officer, should be vested in two ; 
to be so elected that the two should be constituted 
as the special organs and representatives of the re- 
spective sections in the executive department of the 
government and requiring each to approve all the 
acts of Congress before they shall become laws. One 
might be charged with the administration of matters 
connected with the foreign relations of the country, 
and the other, of such as were connected with its 
domestic institutions ; the selection to be decided by 
lot. ... As no act of Congress could become a law 
without the assent of the chief magistrates represent- 
ing both sections, each, in the elections, would choose 
the candidate who, in addition to being faithful to itj» 
interests, would best command the esteem and con- 
fidence of the other section. And thus the presidential 
election, instead of dividing the Union into hostile 
geographical parties, — the stronger struggling to 
enlarge its powers, and the weaker to defend its 
rights, as is now the case, — would become the means 
of restoring harmony and concord to the country and 
the government. It would make the Union a union 
in truth, a bond of mutual affection and brotherhood." 

That was the "conservative principle" of nul- 
lification in its highest perfection, coupled with 



346 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

the total abandonment of the Federal structure 
on the basis of state sovereignty. The Consti- 
tution, as has been stated before, knew nothing 
whatever of sections, and their actual formation 
was in itself the first step towards the dissolu- 
tion of the Union. The Union was endangered, 
not because the original equilibrium between 
the sections had been destroyed, but because, 
by the agency of the slave question, it had been 
actually split into two geographical sections, of 
unequal strength. And now this fact, which 
ran directly counter to the constitutive principle 
of the Union, as established by the Constitution, 
was to be made its determining principle ; that 
is to say, the disease was to be cured by making 
the cause of the disease the vital j)riiiciple of 
the body politic. Nothing, absolutely nothing, 
was left of the equality of the States, which 
was the basis of the states-rights doctrine, and 
in a modified form also of the Constitution, if a 
permanent minority of the States forming a geo- 
graphical section had an absolute veto against 
the majority in all Federal concerns. It was a 
misnomer — nay, one might justly say, it was 
a bold abuse of the name — still to sjDeak of a 
Union, if the constituent members of the com- 
monwealth were to be constitutionally consoli- 
dated into a jjcrmanent geographical minority 
and a permanent geographical majority, which, 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR :il7 

in every question, had to come to a c-oniplete un- 
derstamlins^', ere the body politic became capa- 
ble of political action in any manner whatever. 
Calhoun's remedy, which was to effect the cure 
so "easily," was in fact nothing less than the 
actual dissolution of the Union, thinly covered 
by some artificial contrivances, which could not 
serve any purpose except to keep it for a little 
while mechauically together, and to expose it to 
the scorn and ridicule of the whole world. 

" Having faithfully done my duty to the best 
of my ability, both to the Union and my sec- 
tion, throughout this agitation, I shall have the 
consolation, let what will come, that I am free 
from all responsibility." Those were the last 
words of the last speech of the great and honest 
nullifier. He could no more support himself. 
Two friends had to lead him out of the Senate 
chamber. Slowly and heavily the curtain rolled 
down to shut from the public gaze the last scene 
of the grand tragedy of this brilliant life. For 
nearly twenty years the suspicion and even the 
direct accusation had weighed on his shoulders, 
that he was systematically working at the de- 
struction of the Union. By doing more than 
any other single man towards raising the slavo- 
cracy to the pinnacle of power, he had actually 
done more than any other man to hasten the 
catastrophe and to determine its character, and 



348 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

yet he labored to the last with the intense anx- 
iety of the true patriot to avert the feai-ful ca- 
lamity. But the last efforts of his poweiful mind 
were a most overwhelming- refutation of all the 
doctrines whose foremost champion he had been, 
ever since the days of nullification. It would 
have been impossible to pass a more annihilat- 
ing judgment on them than he himself did in 
his speech of March 4, 1850, and in the Dis- 
course on the Constitution. Yet he had been 
absolutely sincere in everything he had said. 
On Mai-ch 5, in a short running debate with Mr. 
Foote, of Mississippi, he declared, "As things 
now stand, the Southern States cannot remain in 
the Union ; " and a few minutes later he asserted, 
" If I am judged by my acts, I trust I shall be 
found as firm a friend of the Union as any man 
within it." 

Calhoun closed this colloquy with the remark, 
" If any senator chooses to comment upon what 
I have said I trust I shall have health to defend 
my own position." This hope was not to be 
fulfilled, though he still spoke in the Senate as 
late as March 13, and in a manner, as Webster 
stated in his eulogy, "by no means indicating 
such a degree of physical weakness as did in 
fact possess him." On the last day of the month, 
the " magic wires " carried the tidings into every 
part of the Union that John Caldwell Calhoun 



OREGON AND THE MEXICAN WAR 319 

was no more. To the last moment, he mani- 
fested the deepest interest and concern in the 
troubles of his country. " The South ! The 
poor South ! God knows what will become of 
her ! " murmured his trembling lips ; but he 
died with that serenity of mind which only a 
clear conscience can give on the death-bod. 
On February 12, 1847, he had said in the Sen- 
ate, " If I know myself, if my head was at 
stake, I would do my duty, be the consequences 
what they might." It was his solemn convic- 
tion that throughout his life he had faithfully 
done his duty, both to the Union and to his 
section, because, as he honestly believed slavery 
to be " a good, a positive good," he had never 
been able to see that it was impossible to serve 
at the same time the Union and his section, if 
his section was considered as identical with the 
slavocracy. In perfect good faith he had under- 
taken what no man could accomplish, because 
it was a physical and moral impossibility : an- 
tagonistic principles cannot be united into a 
basis on which to rest a huge political fabric. 
Nullification and the government of law ; state 
supremacy and a constitutional Union, endowed 
with the power necessary to minister to the 
wants of a great people ; the nationalization 
of slavery upon the basis of states-rightism in 
a federal Union, composed principally of free 



350 JOHN C. CALHOUN 

communities, by which slavery was considered 
a sin and a curse ; equality of States and con- 
stitutional consolidation of geographical sec- 
tions, with an artificial preponderance granted 
to the minority, — these were incompatibilities, 
and no logical ingenuity could reason them to- 
gether into the formative principle of a gigantic 
commonwealth. The speculations of the keen- 
est political logician the United States had ever 
had ended in the greatest logical monstrosity 
imaginable, because his reasoning started from 
a contradictio in adjecto. This he failed to see, 
because the mad delusion had wholly taken pos- 
session of his mind that in this age of steam and 
electricity, of democratic ideas and the rights 
of man, slavery was "the most solid founda- 
tion of liberty." More than to any other man, 
the South owed it to him that she succeeded 
for such a long time in forcing the most demo- 
cratic and the most progressive commonwealth 
of the universe to bend its knees and do hom- 
age to the idol of this " peculiar institution ; " 
but therefore also the largest share of the re- 
sponsibility for what at last did come rests on 
his shoulders. 

No man can write the last chapter of his 
own biography, in which the F'acit of his whole 
life is summed up, so to say, in one word. If 



OREGON AND THP: MEXICAN WAR 351 

ever a new edition of the works of the greatest 
and purest of proslavery fanatics shoulil be 
published, it ought to have a short appendix, 
— the emancipation proclamation of Abraham 
Lincoln. 



INDEX 



Abebdeen, Lord, sends dispatch to 
Upshur, 230 ; desires to see slav- 
ery abolished in Texas, 231 ; his 
stateuieuts held by Calhoun to 
force annexation of Texas, 231- 
233 ; character of his dispatch, 
233, 234 ; tries to dispel fears of 
South, 234, 235. 

Abolitionists, begin agitation, 121, 
122 ; persecuted, 121 ; remarks of 
Calhoun on, 122 ; their agitation 
understood by Calhoun, 128, 129; 
inadequacy of his proposals to 
combat bylaw, 130, 131, 143, 1G5 ; 
their gains in North described by 
Calhoun, 1G6 ; impossibility of 
their suppression, 107, 168 ; their 
religious pretexts condemned by 
Senate, 191, 193; hopelessness of 
expecting Nortli to stop, admitted 
by Calhoun, 219 ; South wislied 
by Calhoun to imitate, 297. 

Adams, John Quiiicy, denies any 
credit to Calhoun in reforms of 
War Department, 43 ; accuses him 
of extravagance, 44 ; calls him 
unpopular in Congress, 52 ; de- 
scribes attacks on Calhoun to 
Clay's and Crawford's partisans, 
53 ; praises Calhoun as indepen- 
dent .and eloquent, 53, 54 ; later 
accuses him of seeking popularity, 
54 ; and of personal ingratitude 
and malice, 55 ; not unreasonable 
in his complaints of Calhoun, 55 ; 
declarations of Calhoun in sup- 
port of his candidacy, 55 ; de- 
scribes struggle between Crawford 
and Calhoun, 56 ; speaks of Cal- 



houn's courtship of New England 
Federalists, 60 ; elected Presi- 
dent by House, 61 ; appoints Clay 
Secretary of State, bargain cry 
raised, 62 ; Calhoun joins opposi- 
tion to, 63, 64 ; abused by Ran- 
dolph, 63 ; describes Calhoun's 
view of course of South in case 
of disunion, 74 ; accuses Callioun 
of fickleness, 74, 75 ; on Craw- 
ford'.s betrayal of Calhoun to 
Jackson, 87 ; describes his de- 
fence and Calhoun's censure of 
Jackson's Florida campaign, 88- 
92 ; tliinks Calhoun ruined by 
quarrel witli Jackson, 93 ; con- 
siders Calhoun embittered by dis- 
appointments, 163 ; his contempt 
for Webster's slave-trade negotia- 
tions, 210 ; tliinks Callioun aims 
to conciliate North, 211 ; offers 
Callioun mis.sion to France, 257. 

Alabama, demands annexation of 
Texas, 232. 

Allen, William, moves resolution 
calling for notice of termination 
of joint occupancy of the Oregon 
Territory, 265. 

Ai'cher, William S., said to have 
promised Calhoun to delay con- 
sideration of Texas annexation 
treaty until after Democratic con- 
vention, 242. 

Arista, General, crosses Rio Grande, 
277. 

Ai'i.stocracy in South, 67, 69 ; averse 
to middle-class ideals, 70. 

Army, attitude of politicians tO" 
ward, in United States, 44, 45. 



354 



INDEX 



Bacon, Ezekiel, letter of Story to, 
ou Calhouu, 5i). 

BiiDk of the United States, bill to 
incorporate, introduced by Cal- 
houn, 30 ; his argument for, 31, 
32 ; position of Calhoun regard- 
ing, 109, 110. 

Bedinger, Henry, saya South is 
pledged to support Western claim 
to Oregon, 270. 

Benton, Thomas H., asserts demos 
krateo principle, 02 ; thinks Cal- 
houn was driven by disappoint- 
ment of presidential hopes into 
nullification, 95 ; on Calhoun's 
fear of Jackson's threats, 103 ; in- 
troduces sub-treasury scheme, 1S3; 
asserts Calhoun to be author of 
Texas intrigue, 222 ; on Gilmer's 
letter to Green, 223 ; votes to al- 
lovF Tyler to violate Constitution 
or not, 253 ; accuses Calhoun of 
bringing on Mexican war, 285; calls 
commercial retaliation on part 
of South practical disunion, 302 ; 
lays stress on Calhoun's failure to 
bring resolutions to a vote, 305 ; 
says Calhoun instigated motion to 
strike out clause prohibiting slav- 
ery in Oregon, 30(j. 

Berrien, John M., appointed to Cab- 
inet by Jackson as friend to Cal- 
houn, 65. 

Bonaparte, Napoleon, reasons why 
his policy does not bring on war 
with United States, 14. 

Branch, John, appointed to office by 
Jackson as a friend of Calhoun, 
65. 

Brown, Aaron V., sends Gilmer's 
Texas letter to Jackson, 223. 

Brown, General, his share in re- 
forming military establishment, 
43. 

Buclianan, James, suggests receiv- 
ing and rejecting without discus- 
sion all abolition petitions, 132, 
133 ; reply of Calhoun to, that 
abolition and Union were impos- 
sible, 21S. 



Caldwell, Martha, mother of Cal- 
houn, 8. 

Calhoun, Floride, marries J. C. Cal- 
houu, 11. 

Callioun, James, emigrates from 
Ireland to America, 8. 

Calhoun, John Caldwell, his tragic 
career, 1 ; lacks a complete bio- 
graphy, 2; his fame compared with 
that of Clay and Webster, 3, 4 ; 
lack of personal knowledge about, 
4-6 ; loss of his papers, 5; stands as 
representative of an idea, tlie slav- 
ery question, 7 ; from this gains 
his importance, 7 ; ancestry, 8 ; 
birth and childhood, 8 ; defective 
early education, 8 ; consequently 
lacks breadth, 8, 9 ; studies for 
college, his career at Yale, 9 ; 
studies law, 9 ; influence of New 
England on his early opinions, 9 ; 
practices law at Abbeville, 10 ; 
fails to attain eminence at bar, 
reasons, 10 ; more interested in 
politics than in law, 10 ; elected 
to Legislature, then to Congress, 
11; marries his cousin, 11. 
In House of Representatives. 
Appointed by Clay to Committee 
on Foreign Relations, 15 ; chosen 
chairman, 15 ; probably prepares 
report of committee, 15; declares 
for resistance to England, 10 ; de- 
fends report against Randolph, 16 ; 
self-confident without being arro- 
gant, 17 ; a strict parliamentarian, 

17 ; too strong for Randolph, 17, 

18 ; his speech advocating war on 
ground of honor, 18, 19 ; approves 
of embargo as preparation for war, 
21 ; presents report moving for- 
mal declaration of war, 21 ; dis- 
regards protests of minority, 22 ; 
advocates repeal of Non-importa- 
tion Act, 23 ; his reasons, 23, 24 ; 
guilty of precipitation in causing 
war, 25 ; acts as, and avows him- 
self, a national leader, 20 ; in 1816 
advocates preparation for future 
wars with England, 26, 27 ; favors 



INDEX 



355 



a navy, 27 ; his advice regarding 
claims of opposition not heeded 
by Republicans, 28 ; advocates 
road-building for defence, '28 ; 
supports protection to manufac- 
tures, 29 ; does not consider con- 
stitutional objections, 29 ; thinks 
of measures purely from stand- 
point of policy, taking Constitu- 
tion for granted, iiO ; reports bill 
to incorporate bank, 30 ; consid- 
ers constitutional objections not 
worth answering, 31 ; later says 
he was compelled by financial 
situation to waive constitutional 
question, 31 ; unable to disprove 
charge of inconsistency between 
earlier and later parts of career, 

32 ; his sincerity in these utter- 
ances not to be questioned, 32, 

33 ; in speech on tariff of 1816, 
advocates protection as vitally 
necessary, 33-35 ; wishes to make 
United States economically inde- 
pendent, 34 ; wishes to bind coun- 
try together, 35 ; argument on 
constitutionality of internal im- 
provements, 35-37 ; advocates 
broad interpretation of powers of 
Congress, 36, 37 ; deprecates strict 
construction, 37. 

Secretary of War. Appointed 
by Monroe, 38 ; called upon by 
Congress to plan military roads 
and canals, 38 ; reports in 1819, 
38, 39 ; recommends internal com- 
munications as consolidating 
Union, 39 ; and benefiting indus- 
try and commerce, 39 ; in 1824 
repeats recommendation, 40 ; 
later utterances in favor of inter- 
nal improvements, 40 ; in 1825 
prides himself on having aided 
both protection and internal im- 
provements, 40 ; contrast of these 
with later utterances, 41 ; sur- 
prises friends by showing execu- 
tive ability, 41 ; reorganizes War 
Department, 41 ; adjusts old ac- 
counts and takes pride in absence 



of defalcation, 42 ; testimonial of 
employees to his efficiency, 43 ; 
denied credit of reforms by Ad- 
ams, 43 ; accused also of extrava- 
gance, 44 ; advocates considerable 
expenditures for army, 44 ; de- 
serves credit for withstanding ef- 
forts to starve military establish- 
ment, 45 ; advocates reasonable 
policy toward Indians, 45 ; his high 
opinion of Indian capacity for 
progress, 45, 46 ; criticises anom- 
alous political position of Indians, 
47, 48 ; urges education and grad- 
ual civilization, 48 ; resemblance 
of his view to Schurzs, 48, 49 ; 
awards Rip-Rap contract to Mix, 
49 ; unawaie of Mix's reputation, 
49 ; fails to forbid sub-letting of 
contract to his chief clerk, 49, 
50 ; later charged by Mix with 
corruption, 50 ; demands investi- 
gation by House, 50 ; refuses to 
act as Vice-President until cleared 
by House, 50, 51 ; dissatisfied with 
report of House, although exon- 
erated, 51 ; would have done bet- 
ter to ignore attack, 51 ; attacked 
by Crawford's and Clay's parti- 
sans in House as a rival for pre- 
sidency, 52, 53 ; disliked by Ad- 
ams as a rival, 63 ; at first praised 
by Adams for independence and 
fairness, 53, 54 ; later accused by 
Adams of demagogy, 54 ; and of 
ingratitude, 55 ; professes to favor 
Adams for presidency, 56 ; pushes 
his own candidacy, particularly 
against Crawford, 50 ; outdone by 
Crawford in securing support, 
56 ; feels presidential ambition, 
57 ; does nothing dishonorable, 
but acts with a view to securing 
popular support, 57, 58 ; allows 
ambition to influence personal 
relations, 58 ; relies on Pennsyl- 
vania's support and on younger 
men, 58 ; opposed by older Re- 
publicans as too young, 58, 59; 
lacks qualities to cause euthxisi* 



356 



INDEX 



asm, 59 ; nominated for vice-pre- 
sidency, 60 ; endeavors to secure 
support of New England for vice- 
presidency, CO ; praised by Web- 
ster, 60 ; elected by Jackson and 
Adams men, 60; receives New Eng- 
land electoral vote, CO ; obliged to 
choose between Adams and Jack- 
son after election, 61,62; led by 
ambition to join Jacksonian party, 
63. 

Vice-President. Denies his power 
as Vice-President to call a Sena- 
tor to order, 63 ; thought by 
Adams to have held so in order to 
allow Randolph to attack admin- 
istration, 63 ; a strong opponent 
of Adams's administration, 64 ; re- 
elected in 1828 with Jackson, 64 ; 
but does not really approach 
nearer to presidency, 64 ; fails to 
keep on good terms with Jackson, 
64 ; dissatisfied witli Jackson's 
Cabinet, 65 ; in 1825 disapproves 
of concerted action in South as 
sectional, CC ; still maintains na- 
tional tendencies, 66 ; does not 
clearly understand slavery ques- 
tion, 73 ; in Missouri Compro- 
mise struggle, admits power of 
Congress over slavery in Territo- 
ries, 73 ; but holds to necessity of 
niahitaining slavery, 73 ; thinks 
South may be forced into dis- 
union and an English alliance, 74 ; 
led by economic, not political, 
side of slavery to change opin- 
ions, 74 ; accused by Adams of 
fickleness, 74, 75 ; his change due 
to conviction, 75 ; issues South 
Carolina Exposition, 75 ; its main 
interest not his economic but his 
political reasoning, 75 ; points 
out conflict of interest of slave 
States and others as to tariff, 76 ; 
adopts sectional attitude con- 
tradicting previous position, 76, 
77 ; becomes champion of rights 
of minority, 77 ; views Federal 
policy solely as to its effect ou 



South, 77 ; begins to abhor " con« 
solidation," 78 ; asserts state sov- 
ereignty to be essential princi. 
pie of union, 79 ; quotes Virginia 
and Kentucky resolutions, 79 ; 
claims right of State to " veto " 
an unconstitutional law, 79 ; tries 
to show naturalness of veto by 
pointing out that three fourtlis 
of States can override it, 80, 81 ; 
does not see destructive nature 
of argument, 81 ; urges delay in 
exercise of the veto, 81 ; not a 
disunionist in 1828, 82 ; hopes to 
avoid a crisis, 82 ; hopes relief to 
South from Jackson's administra- 
tion, 82 ; led to distrust Jackson 
by conflicting claims made for 
him in campaign, 83 ; considers 
proposal to distribute surplus a 
bid for protectionist support, 84 ; 
takes the lead in opposing Jack- 
son's attempt to force Mrs. Eaton 
on society, 85 ; alienates Jackson, 
85 ; j-et anxious to succeed Jack- 
son, 86 ; thinks Van Buren plots 
to overthrow him, 80 ; said by 
Adams to have been exposed by 
Crawford, 87 ; his previous de- 
nunciation of Jackson's Florida 
career in Monroe's cabinet, 88, 
89 ; said by Crawford to Jackson 
to have demanded his punish- 
ment, 90 ; asked by Jackson to 
explain, 90 ; replies justifying 
his conduct on point of duty, 91 ; 
denounced by Jackson as perfid- 
ious, 91 ; in spite of disclaimer, 
had previously questioned Jack- 
son's motives, 92 ; his presidential 
chances ruined by this quarrel, 
92, 93 ; slow to abandon candi- 
dacy, 93 ; loses support of New 
England, 93; hopes to throw elec- 
tion into House, 93 ; abandons 
hope, his disappointment, 93 ; 
this downfall not the cause of 
his later career, 93, 94 ; it merely 
hastens his conversion into a sec- 
tional leader, 94 ; henceforth a 



INDEX 



357 



free lance in politics, 94 ; not a 
traitor or conspirator, 94, 95 ; hia 
misfortune to see danger to slav- 
ery more clearly than others, 95 ; 
resumes attack on tariff with 
" Address to People of South 
Carolina," 95 ; repeats States' 
rights argument, 95, 90 ; admits 
rule of majority may endanger 
country, 9G ; considers Federal 
government merely agent of 
States, 90 ; uses term "nullifica- 
tion," 90 : his policy to consoli- 
date party, 90 ; after tariff of 
1832, writes letter to Governor 
Hamilton, 97 ; this his final state- 
ment of position, 97 ; the basis 
for Southern action in 1801, 97 ; 
denies existence of " American 
People," 97 ; his historical argu- 
ment, its flaws, 98 ; denies rela- 
tion between citizen and Federal 
government, 98 ; holds it impossi- 
ble for Federal government to 
coerce a State, 99 ; fallacy of his 
argument, 99, 100, 101 ; denies 
power of even three fourths of 
States to bind the minority, 100 ; 
in other words, holds every State 
to possess a veto on any act of 
Federal government, 101 ; realizes 
that in fact it is not a question of 
single States but of sections, 101, 
102. 

Member of Senate. Resigns vice- 
presidency to enter Senate, 103 ; 
takes oath to Constitution, 103 ; 
asserted by Benton to have been 
terrified out of resistance by 
Jackson's threats, 103 ; not afraid 
of Jackson's hanging threat, 104 ; 
realizes danger of South Caro- 
lina's game, 104 ; yields only be- 
cause Congress yields, 104 ; forced 
by Clayton to accept compro- 
mise, 104; yet gains main de- 
mands by the tariff, 105 ; better 
able to claim victory than Jack- 
eon, 105 ; claims overthrow of 
tariff of 1832 proves success of 



nullification, 105, IOC ; at same 
time, admits defeat of States' 
rights by Force Bill, lOG ; in- 
troduces bill to repeal it, lOG ; 
wishes to expunge precedent, 100; 
considers bill a danger tt liberty 
as such, 107 ; considers safety of 
South by no means secured, 107 ; 
declines personal testimonials in 
South Carolina, 107 ; conceives it 
his duty to continue fight against 
Force Bill, 108 ; proclaims his in- 
dependence of party in order to 
save liberties of country, 108 ; 
bitterly opposes Jackson's ad- 
ministration, 109 ; at one with 
Clay and Webster only in opposi- 
tion, not in policy, 109 ; doubtful 
as to bank, 109 ; distrusts bank 
on principle, 109 ; points out ne- 
cessity of divorce of government 
from banking, 110; not a party 
mouthpiece. 111 ; his serious 
study of and devotion to legisla- 
tive problems, 111 ; ability of his 
speeches, HI ; excels as critic, 
111, 112 ; denounces Jackson's 
removal of deposits and protest 
to Senate, 112 ; but refrains from 
personalities, 112; attitude on 
spoils system, 113-110 ; denounces 
office-seekers, 115; wishes to 
deprive President of power to 
remove, 110 ; dreads executive 
usurpation, 117 ; fails to realize 
exceptional presidency of Jack- 
son, 118 ; yet upholds veto 
power, 119; considers Jackson's 
usurpations only part of a cen- 
tralizing revolution, 119, 120; 
considers state sovereignty only 
cure for it, 120 ; harps ou this 
point, 120 ; laughed at as a mono- 
maniac, 120 ; the only person to 
realize significance of appearance 
of abolitionists, 121 ; opens de- 
bate on slavery by moving not to 
receive petitions for abolition in 
District of Columbia, 123 ; cen« 
sured by South for raising que* 



358 



INDEX 



tion, as unnecessary, 123 ; not 
guilty of trying to cause sectional 
strife, 12-1 ; lionest in asserting 
devotion to Union, 124 ; wishes 
to save it hy attacking dangerous 
petitions, 124 ; considers petitions 
a slander on one half Union, 125 ; 
liolds Congress bound not to re- 
ceive them, 125 ; his theories, 
taking uo account of liberal side 
of Constitution, are impossible of 
acceptance, 127 ; in advance of 
both North and South in fore- 
seeing irrepressible conflict, 127 ; 
demands meeting attacks on slav- 
ery by maintaining absence of 
congresaional jurisdiction, 128 ; 
points out danger of abolitionist 
attack, 128, 121) ; asserts impossi- 
bility of compromise, 129 ; inade- 
quacy of his proposed defence, 
130 ; accused of stirring up strife 
over imaginary dangers, 131 ; 
predicts that South will prefer 
slavery to Union, 131, 132 ; his 
resolution rejected, 132 ; intro- 
duces bill to exclude incendiary 
publications from mail, 134 ; re- 
jects Jackson's recommendation 
as infringing liberty of press and 
of States, 134 ; holds it the 
duty of States, not Congress, to 
decide on character of publica- 
tions, 13C ; advocates punisliing 
postmasters for infringing state 
law, 13G, 137 ; irajxjssibility of 
his scheme, 137 ; does not expect 
passage of bill, 13S ; now advances 
beyond nullification position, 138 ; 
holds Federal government mere 
agent of States, 139 ; continues to 
base arguments on Constitution, 

139 ; his real principle is incom- 
patibility of white and black races, 

140 ; fails to convince people, 141 ; 
charged with bringing on dissen- 
sion when he tries to prevent it, 
141, 142 ; denounces compromise 
as fatal to slavery, 142 ; demands 
extinction of agitation, 143 ; treats 



exclusion of question from Con- 
gress as vitally necessary, 143 ; 
demands that congressional laws 
yield to state laws, 143, 144 ; that 
is, the States may nullify not 
merely unconstitutional but valid 
Federal laws, 145 ; his arguments 
based on riglit of each State, but 
he means the South, 140 ; pre- 
dicts that South will do anything 
to defend slavery, 146, 147 ; and 
that, whatever Congress decides 
on any point, the South will con- 
tinue to defend it, 147, 148 ; not 
cast down by failure of threat to 
impress North, 148, 149 ; really 
gains influence, 149 ; considering 
surplus a danger, advocates dis- 
tribution, 150 ; hopes South will 
use its share to buUd railroads, 
150, 151 ; one of first to appre- 
ciate importance of railroads, 151 ; 
explores a route across moun- 
tains, 152 ; wishes by railroads to 
prevent superior growth of North, 
152 ; asserts that Michigan is a 
State prior to admission, 157 ; dis- 
cussion of his position, 158-lGO ; 
holds that a State cannot be forced 
to enter Union, 100 ; recognizes 
necessity of an enabling act, ICl ; 
absurdity of his theory, 101, 102 ; 
considers public domain as belong- 
ing to " people of United States," 
102 ; does not realize inability of 
South to build or utilize railroads, 
152, 153 ; apprehends corruption 
from treasury surplus, 155 ; and 
danger to sovereignty of States, 
155 ; proposes cession of public 
lands to new States, 150 ; on ad- 
mission of Michigan, 150-101, 103; 
embittered appearance described 
by Adams, 103 ; not encouraged 
by slave power's successes, 103 ; 
still sees dangers of future, 103, 
104 ; his energy and passion as 
advocate of slavery, 104 ; repeats 
that abolition petitions should not 
be received, 165 ; points out futil- 



INDEX 



359 



ity of trying to reason abolition 
down, 1('>5; proves truth of his 
own statement, 1G5 ; predicts tliat 
abohtion, if unchecked, will di- 
vide Union, IGG ; yet unable to 
suggest repression, 1C7, 108 ; un- 
dertakes to confute auti-slavery 
arguments, 1G9 ; proclaims sla- 
very a positive good, 171 ; points 
to white race in South to prove 
beneficent effect of slavery, 172 ; 
really has only ruling class in 
mind, 173 ; considers economic 
inferiority of South due to tariff, 
173 ; asserts general principle tliat 
slavery is necessary to civiliza- 
tion, 174-170 ; and that it is su- 
perior politically to free labor, 
175, 170 ; progressive growth of 
his opinions, 170, 177 ; now chal- 
lenges attack, 177 ; impossibility 
of his appeasing North by such 
an argument, 178-180 ; his share 
in panic of 1837, 181 ; abused by 
Jackson, his severe reply, 181 ; 
censures Jackson's policy toward 
Trance, 182 ; abandons Wliigs to 
support sub-treasury, 183 ; not 
guilty of treachery or inconsist- 
ency, 183 ; proposes bank as a 
better plan, 183 ; not a Whig, 
184 ; free, after collapse of Jack- 
eonian system under Van Buren, 
to act alone, 184 ; ainiounces in- 
tention to act solely with view to 
States' rights, 185 ; hopes, by 
supporting administration against 
Whigs, to help States' rights, ISO ; 
futility of his resolutions against 
abolition, 187 ; introduces series 
in 1837, 189 ; secures support of 
Senate to his view of origin of 
Union, 189 ; deduces unconstitu- 
tionality of any meddling with 
internal affairs of a State, 1S9 ; 
vagueness of his resolution, 190 ; 
demands censure of interference 
on religious grounds, 191 ; secures 
support of Senate, 191 ; far-reach- 
ing plans, 191 ; demands that 



Federal government use powers 
to strengthen slavery, 192 ; de- 
nounces attacks on slavery as 
violations of Constitution, 193 ; 
denounces attempts to abolish 
slavery in District or Territories 
as an attack on South, 193 ; and 
finally denounces any attempt to 
prevent spread of slavery on moral 
grounds as contrary to Constitu- 
tion, 194 ; summary of his posi- 
tions, 195 ; allows several years to 
pass without anything on slavery 
190 ; his share in ordinary con. 
gressional politics, 190, 197 ; char- 
acteristics of his debating, 197 ; 
has personal controversies with 
Clay and Webster, 198 ; once con- 
fesses alteration of views, but usu- 
ally tries to prove consistency, 
198, 199 ; opposes bill to punish 
partisan officials as unconstitu- 
tional, 199 ; and useless, 199 ; 
points out evils of rotation in of- 
fice, 200 ; advocates placing office- 
holders beyond reach of execu- 
tive, 201 ; belief in his own infal- 
libility concerning slavery, 202 ; 
at his wits' end, refuses to admit 
fact, 202 ; introduces resolutions 
censuring England for course in 
Enterprise case, 203 ; supported 
unanimously, 203, 204 ; denies 
right of England to discriminate 
between slaves and other prop- 
erty, 204 ; unable to prove fixity 
in law of nations, 205 ; his resolu- 
tions a real defeat, 208 ; yet con- 
siders them a success over North, 
208 ; commends Webster's pro- 
test in Creole case, 209 ; favors 
ratification of treaty to aid in 
suppressing slave trade, 209 ; as- 
serts unavoidable necessity, 210 ; 
said by Adams to be trying to 
conciliate North, 211 ; again a can- 
didate for presidency, 211; resigns 
seat in Senate, 212 ; nominated 
by South Carolina, 212 ; hope- 
lessness of his candidacy, 212^ 



360 



INDEX 



213 ; supported by Irish vote, 213 ; 

uufitted by nullification principles 
to lead a national party, 214 ; not 
supported even by slaveliolders, 
'J 14 ; struggle of his followers 
against Van Buren in 1S43, 215; 
withdraws candidacy in 1S44, 215 ; 
disapproves of denunciation of 
Polk iu South Carolina, 216; as- 
serts impossibility of dissolution 
of Union, 218 ; wliile pointing out 
danger to South of abolition, yet 
asserts secession unnecessarj', 219, 
220 ; in 1836, declares for admis- 
sion of Texas to preserve slavery, 
221 ; claims credit of securing an- 
nexation, 221, 222 ; said by Ben- 
ton to be real author of intrigue 
under Tyler, 223 ; urged for sec- 
retaryship of state by Wise, 226 ; 
accepts office to secure annexa- 
tion, 226. 
Secretary of State. Describes 
reasons for accepting place in 
Tyler's Cabinet, 227 ; comments 
of Niles upon, 227 ; unanimously 
confirmed by Senate, 228 ; asserts 
•inianimous demand of country, 
228 ; damages character for hon- 
esty by his desire for annexa- 
tion, 228, 229 ; tries at first to 
delude Texan envoy into believ- 
ing Tyler will protect Texas, 229 ; 
forced to promise protection " by 
powers under Constitution, ". 230 ; 
delays submission of Texas treaty 
to Senate, 230 ; lays it before Sen- 
ate with letter to Pakenham, 230 ; 
declares England's desire to see 
abolition in Texas makes annex- 
ation necessary, 231 ; tries to 
throw responsibility for annexa- 
tion on England, 232 ; falsity of 
this assertion, 232, 233 ; overlooks 
Aberdeen's disclaimers of purpose 
to influence slave States, 235; 
honest in his fear of England, 
235 ; fears that, even with Texas 
independent, slavery in it is 
doomed, 236 ; proclaims national- 



ization of slavery, 238 ; under di- 
rection of slave States, 238, 239 ; 
concludes letter by praising slav- 
ery as a good, 239 ; hopes to 
draw Pakenham into a corre- 
spondence, 240 ; prevented by re- 
jection of treaty, 240 ; his letter 
bitterly criticised by Northern 
Democrats, 240, 241 ; makes Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations pro- 
mise to delay Senate forty days, 
242 ; his purpose to wait until 
utterance of Democratic national 
convention, 242 ; apprehends re- 
sistance in Senate to annexation, 
243 ; damages annexation feeling 
in North by Pakenham letter, 
244 ; dismayed at rejection of 
treaty, 245 ; probably approves 
Tyler's appeal to House to accom- 
plish annexation in some other 
way, 246 ; volunteers to protect 
Texas while question is pending, 
247, 248 ; autliorizes troops to 
enter Texas on pretext of Indian 
troubles, 248 ; his theories at 
odds with Tyler's claim of a pop- 
ular mandate to annex Texas, 
251, 252 ; said by McDuflBe not to 
have audacity to submit joint re- 
solution to Texas, 253 ; sends dis- 
patch to Texas on last night of 
term, 254 ; defends course as ne- 
cessary, 254 ; probably does not 
expect to be continued by Polk, 
255 ; incompatibility with Polk, 
256 ; offered mission to England, 
257 ; his reasons for declining di- 
plomatic mission, 257, 258 ; pre- 
fers to remain in Senate, 250; 
does not probably expect to settle 
Oregon question, 2(i0 ; futile nego- 
tiations with Pakenham, 260, 261 ; 
declines offer of arbitration, 261 ; 
had previously opposed bill to 
settle Oregon as likely to cause 
war with England, 262 ; advises 
waiting, 263. 
I7i the Senate. Resumes seat, 
259 ; describes effect of Polk's 



INDEX 



361 



Oregon policy, 2C4 ; introduces 
resolution; upholding otfer of 
forty-uiutl parallel, "JOC ; states- 
manship of his position, 2G7 ; de- 
nounced by extremists, 207 ; aban- 
dons policy of delay for compro- 
mise, 208 ; not anxious to extend 
territory of North, 209 ; willing 
to fight England for annexation 
of Texas, 209 ; difference of his 
foreign policy where slavery is 
or is not concerned, 209-271 ; 
open to charge of bad faith, 271 ; 
his influence in Senate described 
by Webster, 271, 272 ; really in har- 
mony with Polk, 272, 273 ; wishes 
to settle Oregon question in order 
to have hands free for Mexico, 
273 ; his liberal announcement to 
Mexico, 274 ; deprecates Polk's 
order to Taylor, 275 ; declines to 
oppose it in order to be able to 
influence Polk on Oregon matter, 
275 ; his position unnecessary, 
275, 276 ; asks delay in declaring 
war in order to examine docu- 
ments, 276 ; makes vain objec- 
tions to declaration on Polk's as- 
sertion, 277 ; abstains from voting 
on war bill, 277 ; foresees gloomy 
consequences, 278, 279 ; charged 
with being author of war, 281 ; 
his real responsibility, 285 ; re- 
pels charge of presidential aspi- 
rations, 286; advocates a merely 
defensive war, 287 ; absurdity of 
his plan, 288 ; admits iuevitable- 
ness of acquisition of territory, 
289 ; predicts that South will not 
consent to exclusion of terri- 
tory, 290 ; opposes conquest on 
these terms, 291 ; presents reso- 
lutions in 1847 on slavery in Ter- 
ritories, 291 ; asserts necessity of 
balance between North and South, 
291 ; considers Missouri Compro- 
mise a great error, 292 ; holds 
that Congress has no right to pre- 
vent entrance of slavery into Ter- 
ritories, or to insist on its exclu- 



sion in a state constitution, 292 ; 
discussion of his doctrines, 293 ; 
wishes to abandon compromise 
spirit of the Constitution, 294 ; 
impossibility of acceptance of hia 
position by North, 295, 290 ; prob- 
ably wishes to obtain a good 
deal by demanding all, 296 ; pro- 
claims slavery in Territories as 
necessary policy of South, 297 ; 
and as only way to save Union, 
297, 298 ; hopes assistance from 
North, 298 ; success of his policy 
of coercing North, 298, 299 ; yet 
only hastens consolidation of 
North, 299 ; his responsibility for 
war of 1801, 300, 301 ; not satis- 
fied with mere defeat of Wilmot 
Proviso, 301 ; proposes conven- 
tion of Southern States to put 
commercial pressure on North, 
301 ; considers such action justi- 
fied by failure of North to accede 
to all demands, 302 ; advocates 
dissolution of Union as last rem- 
edy, 303 ; really wishes to pre- 
serve Union, 303 ; urges that time 
has come to insist on submission 
of North, 303, 304 ; forgets that 
facts, not law, rule, 304 ; never 
calls up resolutions for action, 
Benton's comments, 305 ; opposes 
annexation of Mexico, 305, 306 ; 
his policy regarding Territories 
gains advocates, 306 ; moves to 
strike out clause prohibiting slav- 
ery in Oregon, 306 ; hopes to 
win concessions in South, 307 ; 
denies binding force of Missouri 
Compromise, 308 ; does not shrink 
from facing whole question, 308 : 
on return of Northern Democrats 
to party on basis of non-interfer- 
ence, 308, 309 ; attacks doctrine 
of squatter sovereignty, 309 ; de- 
nies power of Territories to settle 
slavery question themselves, 310 ; 
does not assert that Constitution 
establishes slavery in Territories, 
310 ; unable to compel country to 



362 



INDEX 



ignore slavery, 311 ; acquiesces in 
Clayton's compromise, 312, 313 ; 
loses logical standing by so doing, 
313 ; calls anti-slavery petition 
from New Mexico impudent, 315; 
calls caucus of Soutliern mem- 
bers, 316 ; submits draft of ad- 
dress to constituents, 31G ; be- 
lieved by North to liave planned 
secession, 317, 319 ; admits possi- 
bility of disunion, 317 ; wislies to 
prepare South for it, 317 ; main 
purpose to coerce North by union 
of South, 318 ; proposes notliing 
but union, 319 ; dislike of South-"^ 
ern Wliigs to follow, 319 ; fails to 
form a Southern party, 320 ; gives 
no outward sign of disappoint- 
ment, 321 ; continues struggle, 
321 ; upholds, against Webster, 
the extension of Constitution over 
Territories, 321, 322 ; grows weary 
in session of 1849, 322 ; his sliare 
in Nashville Convention not gen- 
erally known, 322, 323 ; insti- 
gates movement in Mississippi for 
Southern convention, 324 ; desires 
to remain concealed agent, 324 ; 
evidence of his influence in letter 
to Tarpley, 325, 320 ; wislies a 
thorough organization in South 
and a Southern convention, 325 ; 
wishes to save Union by threaten- 
ing North, 320 ; knows tliat South 
is not ready to act, 32G ; lives 
long enough to foresee failure 
of convention, 327 ; never ven- 
tures to assert tliat slavery ques- 
tion can be settled, 327, 328; 
speed) on economic and industrial 
progress, 328-330 ; wislies Soutli 
to introduce factories, 332 ; his 
theory of slavery a dogma unre- 
lated to facts, 332 ; writes disquisi- 
tion on government and discourse 
on Constitution, 333 ; wishes to 
leave tliem as political testament, 
333 ; tlieir cliaracter, 334 ; pliysi- 
cal breakdown in 1850, 336 ; held 
only by sense of duty, 337 ; unable 



to address Senate, his last speech 
on Compromise of IbM read by 
Mason, 338 ; points out again 
danger to Union hy disturbance 
of equilibrium, 339 ; asserts that 
growth of anti-slavery sentiment 
at North threatens South, 339 ; 
says disunion will be a difficult 
process, 340 ; absurdity of cliarge 
that he wished to be president of 
a Southern Confederacy, 341 ; de- 
clares Clay's compromise insuffi- 
cient, 342 ; only North can pre- 
vent disunion by ceasing agitation 
and yielding Southern rights, 342 ; 
his conditions impossible in the 
statement, 343 ; wishes to restore 
power of South by abolishing all 
national laws, 344 ; and by giving 
South a veto on acts of North 
through a double executive, 344, 
345 ; does not realize that his plan 
itself involves a dissolution of tlie 
Union, 346 ; with last words dis- 
claims responsibility, 347 ; his exit 
from Senate, 347 ; sincere in as- 
serting devotion to Union, 348 ; 
continues in Senate, 348 ; dies, 
last words, 348, 349 ; his solemn 
conviction of duty, 349 ; review 
of his task and his failure, 349- 
351. 

Characteristics. General view, 
1-7, 349-351 ; ambition, 1, 57, 93, 
163, 258, 341 ; courage, 1, 7, 104, 
105, 228, 286, 308 ; dignity, 1, 7, 91, 
106 ; disingenuousness, 230, 232, 
233 ; education, 8, 9 ; executive 
ability, 41-44; friends, 5, 41, 57; 
imprudence, 123, 124 ; inconsis- 
tency, 32, 58, 74, 75, 151, 108, 271 ; 
independence, 54, 94, 111, 181, 
258 ; infallibility, sense of, 202 ; in- 
tegrity, 1, 5, 50 ; intellectual 
strength, 1, 9, 54, 74, 94, 327 ; 
leadersliip, 10, 258 ; legal success 
small, 10 ; logical mind, 10, 41, 106, 
109, 127, 149, 308, 322, 338, 350; 
moral force, 1, 113, 337 ; narrow- 
ness, 8, 0, 111, 333 ; parliamentary 



INDEX 



363 



ability, 17, 107, 321 ; patriotism, 
18, 54, 95, 124, 142, 348 ; partisan- 
ship, G3, 64, 229, 252 ; personal 
appearance, 33G ; presidential am- 
bition, 54-59, 211-213, 2SG ; sin- 
cerity, 32, 75, 92, 94, 107, 178, 
337, 348 ; statesmanship, 4, 2G7 ; 
theories, love of, 106, 1G9, 188, 
201 ; transformation in 1828, 76, 
77 ; will power, 1, 1G4, 337. 
Politicdl Principles and Opin- 
ions. His creed, 185 ; abolition in 
District of Colmubia, 124, 125; 
abolitionists, 122, 128, 129, 219, 
297 ; army, 44, 45 ; balance be- 
tween North and South, 291,339, 
342, 344-34G; bank, 30-32, 109, 
liO, 185 ; compromises, 142, 294, 
301, 313; compromise of 1833, 
105, lOG, 165 ; compromise of 
1850, 338-347 ; conflict, irrepres- 
sible, between North and South, 
75, 76, 96, 148, 237, 339 ; Consti- 
tution, earlier interpretation of, 
29, 30, 36, 37, G3, 78 ; later inter- 
pretation of, 80, 81, 97, 108, 125, 
134, 139, 160, 161, 183, 199, 238, 
246, 255; direct tax, 26; diplo- 
matic service, 257 ; distribution 
of surplus, 150 ; disunion, 74, 218, 
303, 317, 318, 326, 338, 340, 341, 
347 ; Force Bill, 166 ; France, 
policy toward, 182 ; Indians, 45- 
48 ; industrial civilization, 328- 
330 ; internal improvements, 28, 
29, 39, 40 ; mails, abolition litera- 
ture in, 134-137 ; Michigan, ad- 
mission of. 15G-162 ; minority, 
right of, 77 ; Missouri Compro- 
mise, 73, 292 ; NashviUe Conven- 
tion, 323, 325, 326; nationalist 
views, 26, 27, 28, 32, 35, 76, 78 ; 
navy, 27 ; non-importation, 23, 
24 ; nullification, 79-82, 99 ; Ore- 
gon, 260-263, 266-268, 270, 271 ; 
petition, right of, 123, 128, 165; 
protection, 29, 33-35, 59 ; public 
lands, 155, 156 ; railroads, politi- 
cal importance of, 151, 152 ; reso- 
lutions, abstract, mania for, 188, 



303 ; slavery, 73, 127, 129, 132, 
140, 146, 164, 171-176, 177, 195, 
239, 332, 349 ; slavery in intenia- 
tional law, 203, 204, 205 ; slavery 
under Constitution, 190, 192 ; 
slave trade, suppression of, 209, 
211 ; spoils system, 113-115, 199; 
squatter sovereignty, 309 ; States' 
rights, 78, 79, 'M\, 119, 120, 13G, 
139, 144, 157, 162, 185, 189, 238, 
251, 334 ; sub-treasury, 183, 184 ; 
Territories, powers of Congress 
over, 73, 162, 194, 291-293, 311, 
321 ; Texas, annexation of, 221, 
227, 228, 231-235, 2r>4 ; Union, at- 
titude towards, 94, 124, 127, 131, 
132, 142, 166, 219, 299, 303, 326, 
349 ; union of South, 66, 96, 149, 
188, 296, 297, 301, 302; veto 
power, 119; war of 1812, 16, 18, 
19; war, Mexican, 273, 274, 277, 
279, 284, 287. 

Calhoun, Patrick, father of Cal- 
houn, a Revolutionary patriot, 8. 

California, desire for conquest of, 
277 ; organization provided for in 
Clayton's compromise, 312 ; re- 
mains unorganized, 314 ; protest* 
against slavery, 315 : adopts state 
constitution prohibiting slavery, 
334 ; resolution of South to keep 
out, 335. 

Canada, failure to conquer, in 1812, 
25. 

Cass, Lewis, asserts nearness of 
war on Oregon question, 265 ; pro- 
claims squatter sovereignty, 309 ; 
attacked by Calhoun, 309. 

Cherokees, adopt a system of laws, 
48. 

Choctaws, appropriate money for 
schools, 46. 

Clay, Henry, recent diminution of 
fame, 3 ; better known person- 
ally than Calhoun, 6, 7 ; leader 
of war party in Congress, chosen 
Speaker, 15 ; appoints Calhoun to 
Committee on Foreign Relations, 
15 ; gives casting vote for contin- 
uance of non-importation, 23 ; bis 



364 



INDEX 



views on protection compared 
with Calhoun's, 3o ; liis support- 
ers in Congress criticise Calhoun's 
administration of War Depart- 
ment, 53 ; liis appointment by 
Adams to State Department 
causes bargain ci'y, G2 ; liis com- 
promise of 1850 opposed by Cal- 
houn, 342. 

Clayton, John M., forces Calhoun 
to support whole compromise 
' tariff, 104 ; introduces compro- 
mise bill, 312. 

Comet, slaves of, freed, 202, 203; 
compensation paid for, 203. 

Compromise of 1850, Calhoun's 
opinion of, 342. 

Confederation, Articles of, purpose 
of amending, 78, 98. 

Congress, carried by war party in 
1811, 15; pas.ses embargo, 21; 
declares war, 22 ; criticises Cal- 
houn's management of War De- 
partment, 52, 53 ; yields in nul- 
lification controversy, 104 ; its 
participation in spoils system not 
foreseen by Callioun, 117 ; its 
power over District of Columbia, 
125-127 ; passes bill punishing 
postmasters for meddling with 
mail, 148 ; admits Michigan con- 
ditionally, 15G ; question of its 
authority over Michigan, 159, IGO ; 
Tyler's claim of popular mandate 
to, discussed, 251, 252; considers 
bill to occupy Oregon, 262 ; held 
by Calhoun to have no right to 
interfere with slavery in Territo- 
ries, 292. 

Constitution, Calhoun's early inter- 
pretation of, 29, 30, 3G, 37, G6, 
78 ; his later attitude toward, 77, 
78, 79, 97-99 ; in relation to Cal- 
houn's refusal to act as Vice-Pre- 
sident until exonerated, 50, 51 ; 
in connection with election of 
Adams, Gl, 62; historical origin 
of, 98 ; protects Calhoun against 
Jackson's tlireats, 104, 105; pro- 
position to amend by abolishing 



veto, 119 ; held by Calhoun to for- 
bid reception of abolition peti- 
tions, 125 ; in relation to power 
of Congress over District of Co- 
lumbia, 126 ; contradictions In, 
12G, 127 ; in relation to exclusion 
of incendiary puldications from 
mail, 134-137 ; held to oblige Fed- 
eral government to follow state 
law, 144-14G ; in relation to status 
of a State before formal adnii.s- 
sion, 157-162 ; not a law for sen- 
timents of people, 177 ; held to 
forbid any meddling by States 
with otlier States, 189 ; in rela- 
tion to annexation of Texas, 245, 
248, 253 ; to Mexican war, 277 ; 
to right of slaveholders to enter 
Territories, 292, 293, 310; impos- 
sibility of his construction of it, 
294, 295 ; question of its exten- 
sion over Territories, 321, 322; 
Calhoun's proposal to amend by 
a double executive, 344-346. 

Crallt', editor of Callioun's works, 
quoted, 15. 

Crawford, W. H., his partisans in 
House attack Calhoun's adminis- 
tration of War Department, 53, 
56 ; opposed by Calhoun for pre- 
sidency, low opinion of, held by 
Calhoun, 56 ; defeated Callioun in 
gaining support of South, 56, 57 ; 
his unfair methods, 57 ; tells 
Jackson of Calhoun's proposals to 
"punish" him for Florida cam- 
paign, 87, 89, 90 ; denies his own 
hostility to Jackson, 90. 

Creeks, attitude toward education, 
4G. 

Creole, case of freed slaves on, 209 ; 
Webster's remonstrance against 
their liberation by England, 209. 

Curtis, G. T., calls Callioun a man 
of deep convictions, 75. 

Democratic party, begins as Jack- 
sonian opposition, 62 : Calhoun a 
member of, 109 ; its national 
convention denounced by Cal- 



INDEX 



365 



houn, 115, 117 ; nominates Van 
Buren, IIS; supported by Cal- 
lioini, ISJ, KS4 ; desire of Callioiui. 
for uoniiuation by, '213, 214; con- 
vention of, postponed, "214, lil5; 
hope tliat its national convention 
may inrtuence Senate, '-'4'2 ; de- 
feats Van Buren, nominates I'olk, 
and demands annexation of Texas, 
243 ; drives reluctant members 
into support of Polk, 24'.l, 250 ; 
elects Polk through Liberty vote, 
250. 

Dickinson, Daniel S., proclaims doc- 
trine of "squatter sovereignty," 
309. 

Diplomatic history, Jackson's deal- 
ings with France, 182 ; Upshur's 
negotiations for aimexation of 
Texas, '224, '2'25 ; Calhoun's diplo- 
macy as Secretary of State, 229, 
230 ; A'oerdeen's dispatch and 
Calhoun's reply to Pakenham, 
230-230 ; negotiations of Callioun 
and Pakenham, about Oregon, 200, 
2G1 ; further negotiations under 
Polk, 202-268. 

Distribution of surplus, Calhoun's 
view of, 150, 151. 

District of CoUimbia, petition for 
abolition of slavery in, 123 ; abo- 
lition in, denounced by Senate, 
193 ; motions to abolish slavery 
and slave trade in, 315. 

Disunion, threatened, in 1820, 74 ; 
thought by Webster to be planned 
in 1828, 82 ; said by Calhoun to be 
imaginary danger, 218 ; threat- 
ened in case of failure of Texas 
annexation, 249 ; danger of, in 
1849-1850, 335, 330. 

Donelson, , Calhoun's dispatch 

to, '254. 

Eaton, Mrs. " Peggy," scandal con- 
cerning, 84 ; attempt of J.ackson 
to break ban against, 85 ; opposed 
by Callioun, 85 ; treated politely 
by Van Buren, 85. 

Embargo, recommended as a war 



measure by Madison, 20 ; passed 
by Congress, 21. 

Encomium, slaves of, freed on Ba- 
hamas, 202, 203 ; compensated for, 
203. 

England, reasons why United States 
resented its commercial policy 
more than France's, 14, 15 ; war 
declared against, '2()-'22 ; alliance 
with, expected by South in case 
of disunion, 74 ; responsibility for 
slavery thrown upon, in 1788, 170 ; 
pays for slaves of Comet and En- 
comium, '203 ; refuses compensa- 
tion for Enterprise slaves, 203 ; 
censured by Senate, 203, '204 ; re- 
fuses to recognize slavery in 
international law, 205, '20C ; its 
action a defeat for South, '206 ; 
remonstrated against in Creole 
case, '209 ; treaty with, for suiv 
pression of slave trade, '209, 2)0; 
mediates between Texas and Mex- 
ico, 225 ; its desire to secure abo- 
lition in Texas, '231 ; its attitude 
used by Calhoun as pretext to 
justify annexation, '231-236 ; dis- 
claims any desire to interfere 
with South, 235 ; proposes to ar- 
bitrate Oregon question, '261 ; its 
superior military power in the 
Pacific, 202 ; rejects Polk's offer, 
204; danger of war with, 204, 
205 ; folly of conduct to, 207 ; 
compromise with, advocated by 
Callioun, '208; dread of South to 
war with, '209, 270 ; desire of Polls 
for peace with, '272. 

Enterprise, its slaves freed on Ber- 
mudas, compensation refused, 
203 ; Adams's opinion of vote on, 
in Senate, 204. 

Federal government, held by Cal- 
houn to be mere agent of States, 
98, 99 ; yiel Is to South Carolina 
in 1833, 105 ; its relation to slav- 
ery according to Jackson, l.'JS, 
130 ; according to Callioun, 136, 
139 ; bound to suppress abolition- 



366 



INDEX 



iam, 143; bound to follow state 
law, 144 ; bouud to protect and 
strengthen slavery, 192, 194, 238. 

Federalists, oppose war of 1812, 28 ; 
efforts of Calhoun to placate, in 
1824, 60. 

Florida, Jackson's campaign in, 87, 
92. 

Foote, Henry S., unaware of Cal- 
houn's instigation of Nashville 
Convention, 322 ; denies it in 1850, 
323 ; retracts statement in 1851, 
323, 324 ; admits Calhoun's influ- 
ence, 324. 

Force Bill, not passed until after 
tariff, 105 ; denounced by Cal- 
houn, 106, 107, 108 ; bill to repeal, 
advocated by Calhoun, 106. 

Forsyth, John, letter of Crawford 
to, 89. 

France, policy of Jackson toward, 
attacked by Calhoun, 182 ; medi- 
ates between Texas and Mexico, 
225. 

French Revolution, enthusiasm of 
people for, 14. 

Gallatin, Albert, asks to be re- 
called from France, 257. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, establishes 
"Liberator," 121. 

Giddings, Joshua R., demands Ore- 
gon as comiterpoise to Texas, 269 ; 
predicts opposition on part of 
South to admission of free States, 
280. 

Gilmer, John A., writes letter on 
Texas annexation, 223. 

Gordon, General, introduces sub- 
treasury scheme, 183. 

Greeley, Horace, his views on pro- 
tection compared with Calhoun's, 
33. 

Green, Duff, letter of Gilmer to, on 
Texas annexation, 223. 

Gregg, Andrew, secures recommit- 
ment of declaration of war against 
Great Britain, 22. 

Grundy, Felix, considers embargo a 
prelude to war, 20. 



Haoner, , aids Calhoun in r* 

organizing War Department, 42. 

Hamilton, James, letter of Calhoun 
to, on nullification, 97. 

Hannegan, E. A., introduces resolu- 
tion denying power of govern- 
ment to compromise Oregon ques- 
tion, 2C6 ; charges South with 
bad faith, 271. 

Hayne, Robert Y., resigns seat in 
Senate to be governor of South 
Carolina, 103. 

Holmes, Isaac E., threatens dis- 
union in 1844, 217. 

House of Representatives, election 
of Calhoun to, 11 ; elects Clay 
Speaker, 15 ; organized by war 
party, 15 ; passes Calhoun's reso- 
lutions to resist England, 19 ; 
passes declaration of war in haste, 
21, 22; continues non-importa- 
tion by casting vote of Speaker, 
23 ; calls on Calhoun to plan mil- 
itary roads and canals, 38 ; pro- 
hibits payments on Rip-Rap con- 
tract, 49 ; examines contract and 
exonerates Calhoun, 51 ; elects 
Adams President, 61 ; its consti- 
tutional power, 61 ; asked by Ty- 
ler to annex Texas in some way, 
245 ; passes annexation resolu- 
tion, 253 ; motion in, to termi- 
nate joint occupancy of Oregon, 
265 ; declares war with Mexico 
on Polk's word, 276 ; attaches 
Wilmot Proviso to two-million 
bill, 278 ; passes bill to organize 
Oregon without slavery, 300 ; lays 
Clayton's compromise on table, 
313 ; motions in, to abolish slav- 
ery in District of Columbia, re- 
pelled, 315. 

Houston, Sam, asserts that South 
Carolina instigated Mississippi 
to call Nashville Convention, 
323. 

Hunter, R. M. T., possessor of Cal- 
houn's papers, 5. 

Indlans, treaty with, 45 ; policy d 



INDEX 



3G7 



Calhoun toward, 45-48 ; of Schurz 
toward, 4'.). 

Ingliaiu, Samuel D., appointed to 
office by Jackson as supposed 
friend of Calhoun, 65. 

Internal iraprovemetits, advocated 
for military purposes, 28, 39 ; ar- 
gument as to constitutionality of, 
35-37. 

International law, in relation to 
slavery, ^OS-^OO. 

Irish, popularity of Calhoun with, 
213. 

Jackson, Andrew, nominated for 
President, 59 ; his followers sup- 
port Callioun for Vice-President, 
60 ; defeated for President in 
House of Representatives, 61 ; 
claims of his followers, 61, 62 ; 
evidently a popular favorite, 63 ; 
preferred by Calhoun to Adams, 
63 ; elected President, 64 ; ap- 
points supposed friends of Cal- 
houn to Cabinet, 65 ; hoped by 
Calhoun to oppose protection, 82 ; 
his double-faced campaign, 83 ; 
takes no decided ground in mes- 
sage, 83 ; distrusts and is dis- 
trusted by Calhoun, 84 ; his social 
campaign in behalf of Mrs. Eaton, 
85 ; dislikes Calhoun for opposing 
her, 85 ; his Florida campaign, 
87 ; his good faith in matter, 88 ; 
censured in Cabinet by Calhoun, 
defended by Adams, 88, 89 ; told 
by Crawford of Calhoun's action, 
89 ; demands explanation from 
Calhoun, 90; Calhoun's defiai.!, 
reply to, 90, 91 ; retorts, abusing 
Calhoun for his duplicity, 91 ; 
story of his threat to hang Cal- 
houn, 103, 104 ; really yields to 
South Carolina, 104 ; opposition 
of Calhoun to, in Senate, 109, 
112 ; not attacked personally by 
Calhoun, 112 ; able to appoint a 
successor, not an heir, 118 ; pro- 
poses a law prohibiting circula- 
tion of incendiary matter through 



mails in South, 133, 134 ; his pro. 
posal criticised by Calhoun, 134 ; 
approves bill proliibiting post, 
masters from interfering with 
mails, 148 ; abuses Calhoun for 
supposed remarks on land bill, 
181 ; censured by Calhoun, 181 ; 
his policy to France condemned 
by Callioun, 182 ; writes letter in 
1S43 on Texas annexation, 224; 
his letter postdated and pub- 
lished, 229. 
Jefferson, Thomas, his policy de- 
fended by Calhoun, 23. 

Kentucky Resolutions, quoted by 
Calhoun, 79. 

Lamar, Mirabeau B., on proba- 
bility of abolition of slavery in 
Texas, 236. 

Lands, public, speculation in, effect 
of, 155 ; their cession to new 
States advocated by Calhoun, 
156. 

Legar<5, Hugh S., in Tyler's cabinet, 
224. 

Liberty party, causes defeat of 
Wliigs, 250. 

Lincoln, Abraham, his emancipation 
proclamation the logical end of 
Calhoun's labors, 351. 

McDnFPiE, George, induced by 
Wise to persuade Calhoun to ac- 
cept State Department, 226 ; de- 
clares Calhoun will not submit 
joint resolution to Texas, 253 ; de- 
serts Calhoun on Mexican war 
question, 279. 

Madison, James, dragged into war 
with England by "young Repub- 
licans," 20; forced bi' them to 
assume responsibility, 20 ; sends 
embargo message as prelude to 
war, 20 ; sends message advocat- 
ing war, 21 ; his policy defended 
by Calhoun, 23. 

Mails, exclusion of abolitionist pub- 
lications from, recommended bj 



368 



INDEX 



Jackson, 134 ; by Calhoun, 134, 
135; his reasons, 135-137; their 
impossibility, 137. 

Mandate, popular, Tyler's theory 
of, 250 ; incompatible with Con- 
stitution, 251 ; or with States' 
rights, 251, 252. 

Maugura, Willis P., supports Cal- 
houn's bill to impede the circula- 
tiou of anti-slavery papers, 138. 

Mann, Horace, thinks Calhoun plot- 
ting a dissolution of the Union, 
3iy. 

Mason, James M., reads to Senate 
Calhoun's last speech, 338. 

Mexico, armistice with Texas, 225 ; 
said to be preparing a new inva- 
sion, 247 ; said to be instigating 
Indian troubles, 248 ; danger of 
war with, causes Polk to hasten 
settlement of Oregon trouble, 
273 ; war with, not desired by 
Polk, 273 ; but made inevitable 
by Polk's claims, 274 ; war with, 
brought on by Taylor, 274, 277 
(see War, Mexican) ; expectation 
of territorial cessions by, 278 ; 
proposal to annex, opposed by 
Calhoun, 305, 30G. 

Michigan, debate on admission of, 
C2, 156 ; admitted conditionally, 
156 ; Calhoun's opinion of, 156 ; 
held by Calhoun to be a State be- 
fore admission, 157 ; discussion of 
his views, 158-102 ; lost by Whigs 
through Liberty vote, 250. 

Milnor, James, renews Randolph's 
motion to open doors of House, 
22. 

Mississippi, demands annexation of 
Texas, 232 ; calls for Southern 
convention at Nashville, 323. 

Missouri Compromise, attitude of 
Calhoun on, 73, 74 ; its line con- 
tinued in annexation of Texas, 
253; rejected by Hou.se, 278 : called 
a great error by Calhoun, 292 ; de- 
nied to be binding on South, 308. 

Mix, Elijah, awarded Rip-Rap con- 
tract by Calliouu, his character. 



49 ; fails to fulfill obligations, 49 j 
sublets contract to chief clerk of 
War Department, 49 ; applies for 
another contract, 50 ; accuses Cal- 
houn of corruption, 50. 

Monroe, James, appoints Calhoun 
Secretary of War, 38 ; said by 
Adams to have difficulty in sup- 
porting Calhoun, 52 ; discussion 
as to his succession, 55, 56. 

Murphy, Henry C, letter of Upshur 
to, on slavery in Texas, 236. 

Nashville Convention, share of 
Calhoun in instigating, 323, 324 ; 
called by Mississippi, 323 ; not 
desired by Calhoun to present an 
ultimatum, 326 ; its failure, 327. 

Navy, favored by Calhoun, 27. 

Nelson, John, tries to satisfy Texan 
demand for protection by vague 
promises, 229. 

New England, influence of residence 
in, upon Calhoun, 9 ; demands a 
naval war, in 1812, 27 ; wishes 
an alliance with South Carolina 
against Virginia, 28 ; urged by 
Webster tu support Calhoun for 
vice-presidency, 60; does so, GO; 
loses confidence in Calhoun, 93. 

New Mexico, desire for conquest of, 
277 ; slavery forbidden in, 310 ; 
question as to how slavery was 
to enter, 310, 311 ; organization 
of, by Clayton's compromise, 312 ; 
remains unorganized, 314 ; people 
of, petition against slavery, 315. 

New York, supports Jackson as pro- 
tectionist, 83; native American 
movement in, 213 ; its loss by 
Whigs defeats party, 250. 

Niles's " Register," on Calhoun's ap- 
pointment as Secretary of State, 
227. 

Non-importation, failure of attempt 
to repeal, 23 ; Calhoun's views 
on, 23, 24. 

Nortli, persecutes abolitionists, 121 ; 
resents Calhoun's motion not to 
receive petitions, 124 ; not indi* 



INDEX 



369 



posed toward South in 1838, 133 ; 
unable, if willing, to suppress 
abolitionists, 133 ; yields to South, 
149 ; growing hold of abolition 
in, described by Calhoun, lOG ; 
its early attitude toward slavery, 
169, 170 ; its turbulence contrasted 
with peace of South by Calhoun, 
175 ; impossibility of convincing, 
179 ; roused to aggressive action : 
by Calhoun, ISO ; impossibility of 
satisfying South, 207 ; hopes of 
Calhoun for presidential support 
in, 213 ; criticises Calhoun's Pak- 
enliaiu letter, 241, 244 ; driven ! 
into support of Polk, 249 ; sup- 
ports Mexican war, 281 ; but grows 
increasingly anti-slavery, 282, 283 ; 
denounced by Calhoun for trying 
to keep slavery out of new Ter- 
ritories, 290, 291 ; impossibility of 
its yielding to Calhoun's theory 
on the Territories, 295, 29G, 311 ; 
expected by Calhoun to yield to a 
solid South, 298, 301, 303 ; driven 
by Calhoun into sterner resist- 
ance, 304 ; only its submission 
to Southern demands can save 
Union, 342 ; impossibility of its 
ceasing agitation, 343. 
Nullification, borrowed by Calhoun 
from Virginia and Kentucky re- 
solutions, 79-82 ; possibility of 
overriding, by three fourths of 
States, SO ; held to be conserva- 
tive principle of Union, 99 ; its 
impossibility, 100, 101 ; tried by 
South Carolina, 103 ; later held 
to include any Federal law, con- 
stitutional or not, 144, 145. 

Oregon, negotiations of Calhoun 
with Pakenham concerning, 2G0, 
201 ; situation in, and claims to, 
261 ; bill to occupy, opposed by 
Calhoun, 262 ; desire of Calhoun 
to gain by simply awaiting growth 
of United States population, 263 ; 
claims of Polk to, 204 ; termina- 
tion of joint occupancy of, de- 



manded, 265 ; " fifty-four forty 
or fight," 266 ; Calhoun's resolu- 
tions concerning, 266-268 ; de- 
mand of Giddings for, to counter- 
balance Texas, 269 ; compromise 
concerning, hastened by approach 
of Mexican war, 273 ; excludes 
slavery, 306 ; bill to organize laid 
on table, 306 ; in Clayton's com- 
promise, 312 ; organized without 
slavery, 314. 

Pakf.nham, British minister, com- 
municates Aberdeen's letter to 
Upshur, 230 ; Callioun's reply to, 
231-234 ; letter of Upshur to, 236 ; 
desire of Calhoun to draw into 
a correspondence, 240 ; negotiates 
Oregon question vainly with Cal- 
houn, 260, 261. 

Parker, General D., accuses Cal- 
houn of extravagance in War De- 
partment, 44. 

Pennsylvania, popularity of Cal- 
houn In, 58, 59 ; supports Jackson 
as a protectionist, 83 ; supports 
Polk as a protectionist, 216. 

Petition, right of, in regard to abo- 
lition petitions, 123, 125, 120. 

Polk, James K. , denounced in South 
Carolina for his double-faced can- 
vass, 216 ; nominated for Pre- 
sident by annexationists, 243 ; 
elected through Liberty vote, 250 ; 
doubtful if Calhoun expects him 
to continue him in office, 255 ; 
not desirous to have a man like 
Calhoun in Cabinet, 256 ; too am- 
bitious to be a mere figure-head, 
256 ; offers Calhoun mission to 
England, probably expecting him 
to decline the honor, 256, '257 ; 
liis relations with Calhoun, 259 ; 
in his inaugural address declares 
American claim to all of Oregon, 
263, 264 ; with<lraws offer of com- 
promise, and advises abrogation 
of commercial convention, 264 ; 
secretly anxious to prevent quar- 
rel with England, 272 ; wishes to 



370 



INDEX 



settle Oregon question in order to 
be free to deal with Texas, 273 ; 
does not vvisli a war with Mex- 
ico, 273 ; prefers diplomacy, 273 ; 
bound, however, to get territory, 
even at cost of war, 274 ; his de- 
mands, 274 ; orders Taylor to 
force a war, 274, 275 ; at same 
time determines to satisfy Eng- 
land in Oregon, 275 ; sends mes- 
sage aimouncing war, 276 ; asks 
two millions to negotiate a peace, 
278 ; does not realize impossibil- 
ity of making conquests for the 
Union, 281 ; merely carries on 
Calhoun's policy too far, 285 ; 
favors a defensive war at first, 
288 ; recommends occupation of 
Yucatan, 300. 

Porter, Peter B., assigned chair- 
manship of Committee on For- 
eign Relations, moves choice of 
Calhoun, 15 ; presents report on 
foreign affairs, 15. 

Preston, William, moves to annex 
Texas in 1838, 232. 

Protection, Calhoun's early favor to- 
wards, 20, 33-35, 59 ; injustice of, 
toward South, 71. 

Railroads, their importance recog- 
nized by Calhoun, 151-153. 

Randolph, John, his attack on war 
policy met by Calhoun, IG ; de- 
feated by Calhoun in debate, 17, 
18 ; his arguments answered, 18, 
19 ; his motion to open doors of 
House rejected, 22 ; his abuse 
of Adams's administration not 
checked by Calhoun, 63. 

Republican party, failure of its 
commercial policy toward Eng- 
land and France, 12 ; old and new 
leaders of, 13 ; war party in, 14 ; 
forces Madison into war, 20 ; divi- 
sion in, on declaration of war, 22. 

Republicans, not the originators of 
civil war, 299, 300. 

Rhett, R. B., threatens disunion in 
1844, 217. 



Rip-Rap contract, awarded by Cal- 
houn to Mix, 4'J ; failure of Mix 
to perform, 49 ; sublet by Mix, 
49 ; Calhoun said to have profited 
from, 50; examined by House, 
50, 51. 

Richardson, William M., moves re- 
peal of commercial restrictions, 
23. 

Russell, Lord John, calls Polk's 
claim to Oregon a " blustering an- 
nouncement," 264. 

Sargent, Nathan, describes Cal- 
houn's attitude on internal im- 
provements, 40 ; on Calhoun's 
determination to break down Ad- 
ams's administration, 64. 

Schurz, Carl, resemblance between 
his Indian policy and tliat of 
Calhoun, 48, 49. 

Scott, General Winfield, his share 
in reforming military establish- 
ment, 43. 

Sears, , letter of Web.ster to, 271. 

Seminole war, Jackson's conduct 
in, 87. 

Senate, recommits war bill, 22 ; 
finally passes it with amendments, 
22 ; Calhoun's presiding over, 63 ; 
election of Calhoun to, 103 ; de- 
bates anti-slavery petitions, 123, 
132 ; receives and rejects petitions, 
1.32 ; rejects Calhoun's bill to ex- 
clude incendiary publications from 
mail, 138; adopts Calhoun's theory 
of origin of Constitution, 189 ; and 
condemns religious anti-slavery 
agitation, 191, 193; adopts Cal- 
houn's amendments censuring 
England in Enterprise case, 203 ; 
character of vote in, for, 204 ; sig- 
nificance of, 208 ; confirms Cal- 
houn's appointment as Secretary 
of State, 228 ; disinclined to follow 
Calhoun, 244 ; rejects annexation 
treaty, 244 ; amends and passes 
annexation joint resolution, 253 ; 
motion in, to terminate joint oc- 
cupancy of Oregon, 265; debate 



INDEX 



37X 



in, on Oregon question, 206, 2G7 ; 
debate on Mexican war, 270 ; re- 
fuses Calhoun's demand for time 
to consult documents, 270, 277 ; 
lays bill to organize Oregon with- 
out slavery on table, 300 ; passes 
Clayton's compromise, 313. 

Seward, \V. H., indignant with alli- 
ance of Whigs with nulliflers, 272. 

Shannon, Wilson, assures Mexico 
that Polk desires to settle all 
questions on liberal terms, 274. 

Slave trade, treaty for suppression 
of, 209, 210 ; attitude of Calhoun, 
210. 

Slavery, its economic effect upon 
South, 06-71 ; damages middle 
class, 67-69 ; prevents artisan 
class, 69 ; not understood by Soutli 
or North to be real cause of 
Soutliern conditions, 72 ; any at- 
t.ack upon, a slander on South, 
125 ; dangers to, foreseen by Cal- 
houn, 127-129 ; not endangered 
from force but agitation, 128, 129 ; 
considered more vital to Soutli 
than Union, 132, 147 ; impossibil- 
ity of abolition of, 140, 140 ; en- 
dangered by railroads between 
South and North, \'>3, 154 ; praised 
by Calhoun, 164 ; admitted to be 
au evil by South, 171 ; held to be 
a positive good for both races, 
171-176 ; necessary to full civili- 
zation, 174, 175 ; necessity of con- 
verting North to belief in, 177, 
178; its real economic effect, 178 ; 
its right to protection by Federal 
government, 192, 194; its right 
to extension into Territories, 194, 
195 ; its relation to international 
law, 203-209 ; danger to it from 
emancipation in Texas, 230, 237 ; 
endangered by a war with Eng- 
land, 270 ; first made dividing 
question in politics by South, 300 ; 
its hopelessness as foundation of 
society, 330. 

South, opposes tariff of 1824, 05 ; 
union of, against, proposed, 65 ; 



opposed by Calhoun, 60 ; economic 
effect of slavery upon, 00-70 ; 
classes in, 67-70; justified in 
hostility to protection, 71 ; does 
not understand real reason, 72; 
tliought by Webster to plan se- 
cession in 1828, 82 ; supports Jack- 
sou as anti-protection, 83 ; effort 
of Calhoun to unite in defence of 
interests, 97 ; meant by Calhoun 
when he says "States," 101, 102, 
140 ; denounces abolitionists, 121 ; 
any attack on slavery a slander 
on, 125 ; necessity of its meeting 
abolitionist attacks at once, 128; 
holds slavery more precious than 
Union, 131, 132 ; insists that North 
suppress abolitionists, 133 ; will 
never cease to assert paramount 
importance of slavery, 140, 147 ; 
continually forces North to yield, 
149 ; desired by Callioun to intro- 
duce railroads, 151, 152 ; unable 
to profit by them, 153 ; really en- 
dangered by tlieni, 153, 154 ; ad- 
mits slavery to be an evil, 109, 
170; gradually alters sentiments, 
170, 171 ; held by Calhoun to be 
benefited by siavery, 171, 172 ; in- 
ferior only in trade, 173 ; economic 
contrast with North, 178 ; dissat- 
isfied witli efforts of North to put 
down abolitionists, 187 ; its de- 
mand to be let alone involves de- 
nial of criticism even, 200, 207 ; 
does not favor Calhoun for Presi- 
dent, 214 ; demands annexation of 
Texas, 232 ; threatens to repeal 
tariff of 1842 in default of Texas 
annexation, 249 ; reproached by 
Northwest for abandoning Ore- 
gon, 207 ; dreads a war with Eng- 
land as danger to slavery, 270 ; its 
unwillingness to accept free States 
predicted by Giddings, 280 ; driven 
to desperation by Wilmot Proviso, 
281, 290; necessity of its consoli- 
dation to obtain rights in Territo- 
ries, 290, 297 ; causes civil war by 
forcing North to form a sectional 



372 



INDEX 



party, 300, 301 ; proposal by Cal- 
houn tliat it boycott the North, 
301, 30i ; in opposinp; exclusion of 
slavery from Oregon, admits con- 
tending for a principle, 307 ; re- 
fuses to yield in 1849,314 ; attempt 
of Calhoun to unite in a party, 
31G-o20 ; wisli of Callioun to pre- 
pare it for tlie worst, 317 ; its 
members of Congress confer and 
adopt address but fail to unite, 
320 ; plan of Callioun to unite by 
Nashville Convention, 325 ; con- 
tinues to lose ground relatively 
to North, 330 ; dissatisfaction in, 
with slavery, 331 ; determines to 
keep out California until North 
makes concessions, 335 ; Cal- 
houn's anxiety for, on death-bed, 
349. 

South Carolina, proposed coalition 
of New England with, against 
Virginia, 28 ; approval of internal 
improvements, 40 ; " Exposition" 
written for, by Calhoun, 75 ; high 
morality of family life in, 85 ; its 
reception of tariff of 1832, 97; 
passes nullification ordinance, 103; 
elects Hayne governor, 103 ; tariff 
of 1833 a yielding to, 105; urges 
claims of Calhoun for presidency, 
211; nominates him, 212; dis- 
mayed at his failure, 215 ; de- 
nounces Polk for supposed protec- 
tionist leanings, 21(5 ; complains of 
loss by emigration to Mississippi 
and Northwestern States, 331. 

Spoils system, denounced by Cal- 
houn, 113-115; proposal of Cal- 
houn to remedy, IIG, 117, 201 ; 
bill to punish partisan officials 
opposed by Calhoun, 190, 200. 

States' rights, held by Calhoun to 
be comer-stone of Union, 78, 79, 
9G, 98, 99 : means, in Calhoun's 
mind, Southern right.s, 101, 146; 
held by Calhoun to be infringed 
by Force Bill, 100, 119, 120; in 
relation to Federal law, 136, 139, 
144 ; opinion of Calhoun that a 



State cannot be forced into Union, 
IGO, IGl ; the origin of Union. 189. 

Sti 1 hens, AlexauikT H., moves to 
lay Clayton's compromise on ta- 
ble, 313. 

Story, Joseph, admires Calhoun, but 
thinks him too young for presi- 
dency, 59. 

Stow, Silas, moves to postpone war 
action, 22. 

Sub-treasury, attitude of Calhoun 
toward, 183, 184 ; its adoption 
strengthens central government, 
18G. 

Supreme Court, left by Clayton's 
compromise to settle question of 
slavery in new Territories, 313. 

Taney, Roger B., denounced by 
Calhoun, 114. 

Tariff, of 181G, argument of Calhoun 
for, 33-35, 59 ; of 1824, causes ex- 
citement in South, G5: of 1828, 
calls for Calhoun's South Carolina 
Exposition, 75; of 1832, fails to 
satisfy South, 97 ; causes nullifi- 
cation movement, 97 ; of 1833, a 
yielding to South, 104; Calhoun 
forced to support, 104 ; tlireat of 
abrogation of, frightens North into 
supporting Texas annexation, 249. 

Tarpley, Collin S., letter of Calhoun 
to, suggesting Nashville Conven- 
tion, 325, 326. 

Taylor, General Zachary, ordered 
to occupy up to Rio Grande, 274 ; 
as President, sanctions action of 
California, 334. 

Tennessee, demands annexation of 
Texas, 232. 

Territories, right of slaveholders to 
enter, 194, 195 ; question of slavery 
in, brouglit on by Mexican war, 
280-283, 290 ; Calhoun's resolu- 
tions on, 291-293 ; their impossi- 
bility of acceptance, 29t-21'G, 311 ; 
squatter sovereignty in, 309 ; ques- 
tion as to extension of Constitu- 
tion over, 321, 322. 
, Texas, annexation of, favored bj 



INDEX 



373 



Calhoun, 221, 222; intrigue for 
annexation of, under Tyler, 223- 
254 ; part played by, question in 
defeating Van Buren's nomina- 
tion, 224, 242, 243 ; negotiations 
of Upshur with, 225 ; demands 
protection during negotiations, 
225 ; receives promise from Cal- 
houn, 229 ; agrees to treaty, 230 ; 
attitude of England toward, 231, 
234 ; necessity of annexing, to 
prevent enianicipation, 231, 232, 
235-238 ; popular agitation for, in 
South, 232 ; annexation demanded 
by Democratic party, 243 ; treaty 
with, rejected, 244 ; notifies Cal- 
houn of threatened invasion from 
Mexico, 247 ; gains promise of con- 
tinued protection, 247 ; Tyler's 
theory of popular mandate to an- 
nex, 250-252 ; resolution to annex, 
passed and signed, 253. 

Thompson, Waddy, moves to annex 
Texas, 232. 

Turney, Hopkins L., charges Cal- 
houn with obstructing war for 
presidential motives, 286; pro- 
voked by Calhoun's advocacy of 
a defensive war, 287. 

Tyler, John, appoints Upshur Secre- 
tary of State, 224 ; persuaded by 
Wise to appoint Calhoun, 226 ; 
said by Nelson to favor protecting 
Texas, 229 ; known to favor an- 
nexation in 1841, 232 ; said by Up- 
shur to fear abolition in Texas 
under English influence, 236 ; crit- 
icised by Northern Democrats for 
Calhoun's Pakenham letter, 241 ; 
dismayed by rejection of treaty, 
245 ; sends message urging Con- 
gress to secure annexation in some 
other way, 245 ; waives constitu- 
tional question, 246 ; as ready as 
Jackson to " assume responsibil- 
ity," 248 ; asserts election of 1844 
to be a mandate, by a controlling 
majority of people and States, to 
annex Texas, 250 ; approves joint 
resolutioQ of annexation, 253. 



Union, historical growth of, 78, 98 ; 
Calhoun's tlieory of, 78, 7'.), 97-99, 
189; impossibility of his theory, 
100, 101 ; Calhoun's devotion to, 
124, 131, 142, 299; endangered by 
attack on slavery, 132, 166 ; its 
actual division causes sectional 
parties, 300 ; impossibility of sav- 
ing, on Calhoun's own statement, 
343. 

Upshur, Abel P., succeeds Webster 
as Secretary of State, 224 ; pro- 
poses aimexation to Texas, 224 ; 
dares not either grant or deny 
Texas' request for protection, 225 ; 
killed, 225 ; Aberdeen's dispatch 
to, 230 ff. ; avows English de- 
signs on slavery in Texas as cause 
for annexation, 236 ; thinks Texas 
cannot maintain slavery unless 
annexed, 236. 

Van Buren, Martin, gains Jack- 
son's favor by attentions to Mrs. 
Eaton, 85 ; Calhoun's rival for 
succession to Jackson, 86 ; wishes 
Jackson's reelection, 86 ; sus- 
pected by Calhoun of having be- 
trayed him to Jackson, 86 ; too 
cunning to show his hand, 86; 
promises to follow in Jackson's 
footsteps, 118; does not imitate 
Jackson's methods, 118; his sulv 
treasury scheme supported by 
Calhoun, 183 ; considered power- 
less for evil by Calhoun, 184 ; his 
nomination opposed in 1843-1844 
by Calhoun's followers, 214, 215 ; 
his followers succeed in postpon- 
ing date of convention, 215 ; de- 
feated for nomination at Balti- 
more convention by Texas annex- 
ationists, 243. 

Van Zandt, Isaac, Texan envoy, 
asks United States to protect 
Texas during negotiations, 225. 

Virginia, its anti-commercial policy 
opposed by New England, 28. 

Virginia resolutions, quoted by Cat 
houn, 79. 



374 



INDEX 



Waddel, Dr. Moses, prepares Cal- 
houn for college, 9. 

War Department, Calhoun's man- 
agement of, 41, 53. 

War of 1812, declaration urged by 
Callioun, 18, 19 ; war message 
sent by Madison, 21 ; declaration, 
21, 22 ; not a national but a party 
war, 25 ; yet worth fighting, 25 ; 
mistake in conduct of, 27, 28. 

W^ar witli Mexico, causes of, 273, 
274 ; Taylor's advance to Rio 
Grande, 274 ; deprecated by Cal- 
houn, 275 ; not opposed by him in 
order to help administration set- 
tle Oregon question, 275 ; Polli's 
war message, 27G ; accepted by 
Congress, 276, 277; Calhoun's 
opinion of, 277, 279, 284; Cal- 
houn's responsibility for, 285 ; de- 
fensive character for, advocated 
by Calhoun and Polk, 287, 288. 

W^ebster, Daniel, modern diminu- 
tion of his fame, 3 ; compared 
with Calhoun, 4, 6 ; asked by 
Calhoun to help country out of 
financial difficulties, 25 ; hopes 
New England will support Cal- 
houn for vice-presidency, 60 ; on 
plan for a Southern Confederacy 
in 1828, 82 ; his remonstrance in 
Creole case approved by Calhoun, 
209 ; his treaty for suppression of 
slave trade approved by Calhoun, 
209, 210 ; leaves Tyler's Cabinet, 
224 ; on Callioun's influence with 
Whigs in 1846, 272 ; debates with 
Calhoun the status of Constitu- 
tion in Territories, 321, 322 ; his 
eulogy of Calhoun, 348. 



Webster, Bzekiel, letter of Webster 
to, 60. 

Westcott, James D., calls anti-slav- 
ery petition from Santa F6 an 
abuse of right, 315. 

Whig party, its protection princi- 
ples foreshadowed by Calhoun, 
33 ; Calhoun not a member of, 
109 ; mistaken in opposing execu- 
tive, 117, 118; accuses Calhoun 
of treachery in supporting Van 
Buren, 183, 184; incompatibility 
with Calhoun's principles, 186 ; 
defeated by Liberty vote, 250 ; 
Southern members reluctant to 
follow Calhoun, 319, 320; later, 
leads Southern attacks, 335. 

Wick, William W., moves extension 
of Missouri Compromise line in 
place of Wilmot Proviso, 278. 

Williams, Jolin, carries reforms in 
War Department through Con- 
gress, 43. 

Wilmot, David, moves anti-slavery 
proviso to two-million bill, 278. 

Wilmot Proviso, adopted, 278 ; its 
defeat by South a barren victory, 
305. 

Wirt, William, on Crawford's be- 
trayal of Calhoun, 87 ; thinks 
Calhoun ruined by quarrel with 
Jackson, 93. 

Wise, Henry A., enthusiastic over 
Texas, 226 ; succeeds in inducing 
Tyler to appoiut Calhoun Secre- 
tary of State, 226 ; predicts West- 
ern progress of slavery, 283, 284. 

Tale Colleqb, studies of Calhoun 
at, 9, 10. 



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